What a fun day for our Halifax community! The sun was shining and we were in a historic venue that was perfect for a day of learning. 😎📜   We had a presentation by @JaredLinck about R integration with SAS Viya. 👨‍💻👩‍💻 A presentation and live demonstration of how SAS and R can be used together to optimize how you work with data and analytics. We will begin with a brief overview of the various integration points between SAS and open source tools like R, Python, and web apps using APIs. This integration includes both directions of communication: from SAS out to open-source tools, and from open-source tools into SAS. We will then provide a live demonstration of specific methods for integrating R with your existing and future SAS workflows. Time will be reserved for questions and discussion of strategies and tips to take advantage of the best of both SAS and R in your daily work.   Then, we split into 3 teams and tested our SAS knowledge with a game of Jeopardy. 🎮  We found out how much we know about Procs, informats, graphs, and dates. Great job to Team No, winning in a tight race! 🏆   In this post, you will find the presentations for your reference. We hope you had fun, found it valuable, and able to reconnect with other users in the community. See you again at the next one! 🤗 ... View more

And that's a wrap for our spring edition of ESUG! 👏   What a great day of learning, knowledge exchange, and connecting with new and old friends. Here's what we had in store for everyone. 8:30am - 9:00am Registration and Light Breakfast 9:00am - 9:05am Welcome Remarks @dougd , ESUG President 9:05am - 9:15am SAS Updates Alice Yuan, SAS Canada A quick look at new developments in the world of SAS. 9:15am - 9:45am A Snapshot of Quantile Regression Anamaria Savu, University of Alberta Quantile regression is a type of regression that models the conditional quantiles of a response variable on predictor variables. Unlike ordinary least squares (OLS) regression, which models the conditional mean of the response variable given the predictor variables, quantile regression allows to model separately different quantiles (such as the median, quartiles, or any other percentile) of the response variable. She will discuss the advantages of quantile regression through examples. At the same time I will demonstrate how PROC QUANTREG can be used to perform quantile regression. 9:45am - 10:15am Tips & Tricks   A Forest of Decisions: Navigating Complexity with Random Forest using SAS 9.4 Anthony Wu, Government of Alberta Random Forest is a powerful ensemble learning technique widely used in machine learning for classification and regression tasks This presentation will explore some practical implementations of Random Forest in SAS 9.4, showcasing its effectiveness in predictive analytics and model building across various domains. 10:15am - 10:40am Networking Break 10:40am - 11:10am Automated Processing of Web-Based Research Data Using Proc HTTP and Macro Variable Lists @rickwatts , Women and Children's Health Research Institute Rick and team use a web based system called REDCap to collect medical research data from study participants. A single REDCap system houses many thousands of projects, each of which can be designed and modified by individual researchers. This is a very dynamic data environment with project level data structures continually changing. Any such change is reflected in data extracts resulting in frequent re-writes of existing SAS code. To address this challenge Rick has written a large lump of ugly SAS code that uses PROC HTTP to extract project data via REDCap’s RESTFUL API. System metadata allows REDCap concepts to be mapped to SAS data types, variable names, labels and formats before data is extracted and processed into individual, study specific data sets. 11:10am - 11:55am Integrating Synthetic Data Generation in Machine Learning Modeling Pipelines @BrettWujek & @Sundaresh , SAS Synthetic data generation is increasingly important for augmenting existing data sets, mitigating imbalance in data sets with rare events and enabling data science tasks without having to share sensitive real data. In this presentation, we show how to use SAS® analytical capabilities to efficiently generate high-quality synthetic data. We demonstrate the use of SAS procedures, a REST API in Python, related pre-processing and post-processing steps, as well as assessment metrics. 11:55am - 12:00pm Closing Remarks              If you have a presentation idea for our next meeting, please let us know. See you at the next one! 😃 ... View more

Thank you for joining us for another great CSUG Meeting! 💃 We had a great time meeting you (again) in-person and exchanging knowledge and experiences. 🤓   Here was the agenda: 8:30am - 9:00am Registration and Light Breakfast 9:00am - 9:15am Welcome Remarks and SAS News Alice Yuan, SAS Canada 9:15am - 10:00am Integrating Synthetic Data Generation in Machine Learning Modeling Pipelines @BrettWujek & @Sundaresh , SAS US Synthetic data generation is increasingly important for augmenting existing data sets, mitigating imbalance in data sets with rare events and enabling data science tasks without having to share sensitive real data. In this presentation, we show how to use SAS® analytical capabilities to efficiently generate high-quality synthetic data. We demonstrate the use of SAS procedures, a REST API in Python, related pre-processing and post-processing steps, as well as assessment metrics.   Note: this was a virtual presentation. 10:00am - 10:20am Programming Tips & Tricks @andrei17 , FRG Risk 10:20am - 10:50am Networking Break 10:50am - 11:40am SAS and Open Source @nicosigal  & @DeepJariwala027 , SAS Canada 11:40am - 11:50am Closing Remarks                 Thank you to our speakers! 👏   If you would like to ask more questions or just connect with the Western Canada team: Sales Director: Christine Jackson Customer Success Manager: Nick Sandy Sr Systems Engineer: Nicolas Sigal Account Executive: Ivan Scheverman Thank you for a great day and we hope we'll see you at our next one. ... View more

EDIT: .pdf version in attachment and hi-res .jpg and .png added below   Hello, all!   Thank you for your patience regarding the User Group badge. SAS has moved away from putting a date on these badges, so we will be using the generic one below from here on out. Please let me know if you have any questions.   Thanks, Shelley       ... View more

Date: Thursday, January 18, 2024 Time: Noon - 1:00 PM ET Place: Online Cost:  Free- but please register by Tuesday,  January 16.  The webinar link will be sent out to all registered attendees by Wednesday, January 17. Register Now!   Agenda Getting Started with Building Regression Models for Prediction - Robert N. Rodriguez This webinar will introduce you to SAS/STAT procedures in SAS 9 that train regression models from large, complex data for doing prediction with future data. The procedures are designed to avoid overfitting the training data, and the models they build are interpretable—an advantage over machine learning models. Examples use the GLMSELECT procedure to build a general linear model for store performance and the HPGENSELECT procedure to build a generalized linear model for insurance claims.   Bob Rodriguez retired from SAS in 2018 after serving as senior director for the development of statistical software. He received his PhD in statistics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association. The webinar draws from his book, Building Regression Models with SAS: A Guide for Data Scientists, which was published by SAS Press in 2023. ... View more