Today, more than half of the world’s habitable land is used for agriculture. It fuels the economy, a large portion of the supply chain and, most importantly, people. With an ever-growing population, it is crucial to work with crops efficiently. A critical factor in growing crops is knowing the condition [...]
How agriculture scientists are using machine learning to farm efficiently was published on SAS Voices by Olivia Ojeda
The addition of the PYTHON procedure and Python editor in SAS Viya enables users to execute Python code in SAS Studio. This new capability in SAS Viya adds another tool to SAS's existing collection. With this addition I thought, how can I utilize this new found power?
In this example, I'll keep it simple. I want to create a Microsoft Excel report using a combination of SAS, Python and SQL. I'll use data that's stored in a SAS library; however, the library could be using data stored anywhere, like a path, database or in the cloud. I'll write a program that executes the following:
All code used in this post is located on GitHub, here.
To begin, I'll create a macro variable to specify the output folder path and Microsoft Excel workbook name.
%let path=/*Enter your output folder path*/; %let xlFileName = myExcelReport.xlsx; |
Further, I'll prepare the data using the SAS DATA step. I'll use the available sashelp.cars table, create a new column named MPG_Avg, and drop unnecessary columns. Instead of using the DATA step you can use Python or SQL to prepare the data. Whatever tool works best for you.
data work.cars; set sashelp.cars; MPG_Avg=mean(MPG_City, MPG_Highway); drop Wheelbase Weight Length; run; |
After the data is ready, I'll use the ODS EXCEL statement to create the Excel spreadsheet. The following ODS options are used:
ods excel file="&path./&xlFileName" style=ExcelMidnight options(embedded_titles="on"); |
With the ODS EXCEL destination open I'll name the first worksheet Data, and manually specify when a new sheet is created. Next, I'll use the PRINT procedure to print the detailed data to Excel. The PRINT procedure will print the entire SAS data set with the associated formats and styles to Excel.
* Sheet 1 - Print the data using SAS *; ods excel options(sheet_name='Data' sheet_interval='none'); title height=16pt color=white "Detailed Car Data"; proc print data=work.cars noobs; run; |
Next, I want to create violin plots on a new worksheet named Origin_MPG. Now, these can be created in SAS, but I personally found the matplotlib package in Python a bit easier to use . With the PYTHON procedure, I can include the Python code within the SAS program (or you can reference a .py file) to create the visualization. Then I'll use the SAS.pyplot method to save and render the visualization. Since the pyplot callback renders the image in the results tab, it exports the image to the Excel workbook by default.
First I'll use ODS EXCEL to create the new worksheet and the TITLE statement to add a title to the Excel worksheet.
ods excel options(sheet_name='Origin_MPG' sheet_interval='now'); title justify=left height=16pt color=white "Analyzing MPG by Each Car Origin"; |
Then I'll execute the PYTHON procedure to execute my Python code.
* Create violin plots using Python *; proc python; submit; ## ## Import packages and options ## import pandas as pd import matplotlib.pyplot as plt plt.style.use('fivethirtyeight') outpath = SAS.symget('path') ## ## Data prep for the visualization ## ## Load the SAS table as a DataFrame df = (SAS .sd2df('work.cars') ## SAS callback method to load the SAS data set as a DataFrame .loc[:,['Origin','MPG_Avg']] ## Keep the necessary columns ) ## Create a series of MPG_Avg for each distinct origin for the violin plots listOfUniqueOrigins = df.Origin.unique().tolist() mpg_by_origin = {} for origin in listOfUniqueOrigins: mpg_by_origin[origin] = df.query(f'Origin == @origin ').MPG_Avg ## ## Create the violin plots ## ## Violin plot fig, ax = plt.subplots(figsize = (8,6)) ax.violinplot(mpg_by_origin.values(), showmedians=True) ## Plot appearance ax.set_title('Miles per Gallon (MPG) by Origin') rename_x_axis = {'position': [1,2,3], 'labels':listOfUniqueOrigins} ax.set_xticks(rename_x_axis['position']) ax.set_xticklabels(rename_x_axis['labels']); ## Save and render the image file SAS.pyplot(plt, filename='violinPlot',filepath=outpath) endsubmit; quit; title; |
SQL is an extremely common and useful language for data analysts and scientists. I find using SQL for aggregation easy, so I will create a simple aggregation and add it below the visualization on the same worksheet in the the Excel report.
* SQL Aggregation *; title justify=left "Average MPG by Car Makes"; proc sql; select Origin, round(mean(MPG_Avg)) as AverageMPG from work.cars group by Origin order by AverageMPG desc; quit; title; |
At the end of the same worksheet I'll add some simple text using the ODSTEXT procedure to give some information about the data.
proc odstext; heading 'NOTES'; p 'Using the SASHELP.CARS data. The following car Origins were analyzed:'; list ; item 'Asia'; item 'Europe'; item 'USA'; end; p 'Created by Peter S'; quit; |
Lastly, I'll close the ODS EXCEL destination since I am done writing out to Excel.
ods excel close; |
That's it! Now I'll execute the entire program and view the Excel workbook.
With the capabilities of SAS and the new ability to execute Python code in SAS Studio, teams have a variety of tools in SAS Viya for their analytic needs.
PYTHON Procedure documentation
SAS opens its code editor interface to Python users
Using PROC PYTHON to augment your SAS programs
ODS Excel Statement
Creating a Microsoft Excel report using SAS, Python and SQL! was published on SAS Users.
When generating animation files, the number of frames shown per second is called the frame rate (FPS - Frames per second). Generally, the higher the frame rate, the smoother the animation. Human eyes can process 10 to 12 frames per second and perceive them individually, while higher frame rates are perceived as motion due to "persistence of vision." Modern movies are usually shot and presented at 24 FPS, and there are currently five commonly used frame rates in the film and television industry: 24 FPS, 25 FPS, 30 FPS, 50 FPS and 60 FPS for HDTV.
Animations can present richer time-varying analysis results than static images. It can consider and compare analysis results from different angles to present more details. Animations generated in SAS can be in GIF or SVG format. Various SAS/Graph PROC and SG PROC steps support generating animated GIF files. This short post discusses some timing control issues that authors have found while generating animations for rigorous physics simulations with SAS. Preserving time accuracy is important in physics simulation and some time-sensitive animation generation.
The Graphics Interchange Format (GIF) is a bitmap image format with animation features created by CompuServer in 1987, and GIF89a is version 89a (July 1989) of the format. Its advantages include smaller file sizes and wider support for web browsers and platforms, but the smallest unit of frame duration in the GIF89a file format is hundredths of a second (0.01 seconds) instead of milliseconds (0.001 seconds). Many GIF tools allow specifying the frame duration in milliseconds, even though they will be rounded to hundredths of seconds anyways. They unintendedly mask the limitations of this file format. On the other hand, some GIF-playing software will automatically modify a time interval that is too small. For example, Microsoft's IE rounds up time intervals under 50ms to 100ms. This creates certain challenges for producing time-accurate animations.
Research in 2014[1] indicated that GIF89a does not produce substantial delays when an animation interval is larger than 100ms, regardless of the web browser. Below this threshold, the resulting performance falls considerably. IE9 reinterprets any delay below 100ms as 100ms, so a 50ms interval shows a 50ms delay, while a 16.67ms interval shows around 85ms delay. Firefox 10 and Chrome 17 can execute a GIF89a animation correctly (except for an 85ms delay on 16.67ms intervals), and their mean number of missed frames is smaller and stabilizes over time. The refresh interval is 16.67 milliseconds for a screen with a refresh rate of 60Hz.
Due to the need to control the size of the generated file, 8 FPS (125ms) is enough for most GIF files. When there are many dynamics at play, we can use 15 FPS (66.67ms). The file size for 24 FPS (41.67ms) GIFs without compression will be larger than a standard MP4 video file, so then it would be better to produce the animation as an MP4 instead of a GIF format with a higher FPS.
When generating animations in SAS, you can specify the duration of a frame through the SAS system option ANIMDURATION. It can accept up to 10 characters in length, that is, there can be 8 significant digits after the decimal point. This commonly leads to programmers incorrectly thinking that the duration of the animation can be specified in milliseconds. The actual test shows that in SAS, the duration of a frame specified via ANIMDURATION option with value 1/FPS, and the actual duration of the animation will be quite different. That is, if the programmer wants to generate relatively time-accurate animation directly in the simulation, they should pay attention when selecting a specific FPS to generate the animation and use the following relationship to specify the target DURATION value:
/*Calculate the accurate ANIMDURATION from/to FPS in SAS*/ proc fcmp inlib=work.proto outlib=work.fcmp.animation; function fps_animduration(fps); dur=1/fps; return( floor( dur * 100)/100 ); *Keep the first 2 digits after decimal point instead of round(dur, 0.01); endsub; function animduration_fps(dur); return( floor(<strong>1</strong>/dur) ); *Cut the integer part; endsub; run; option cmplib=(work.fcmp); |
Accordingly, the following conversion can be used in SAS Macro:
%let DUR=%sysevalf( %sysfunc(floor((1/&FPS)*100 ))/100 ); |
In a time-accurate physics simulation, the duration or period is the absolute time, so the number of frames that need to be generated is the duration divided by the frame rate. Since the minimum unit of GIF per frame duration mentioned above is one-hundredth of a second, the actual generated frame rate is larger than expected in a generated GIF file, which means that the actual number of frames generated is less than expected for a specified simulation duration. Experiments show that when the FPS is less than or equal to 100, if no error in the number of generated frames is allowed, there are only 19 frame rates that can be used: 1-10, 11, 12, 14, 16, 20, 25, 33, 50 and 100 FPS. If 5% of the generated frames or time error is allowed, you can have an additional 8 frame rates to choose from: 24, 32, 48, 49, 96, 97, 98 and 99 FPS. Based on the background knowledge mentioned earlier, combined with actual needs, GIF file size limitations and playback smoothness requirements, we’d better generally choose a frame rate between 8 and 25 to produce time-accurate animations. 8, 10, 16, 20 and 25 FPS are all good choices. 24 FPS can be chosen if the error rate of frames generated is allowed to be <=5%. The following table lists the error between the actual number of frames generated and the expected number of frames when the duration is 1s under different FPS settings:
Figure1: Frame lost rate (<=5%) and FPS in GIF generation
The relationship between the actual loss rate of generated frames and specified FPS in the figure below reveals which frame rate we should specify when generating time-accurate animations:
Figure2: Frame lost rate and FPS specified in GIF generation
The figure below is a single-cycle animation generated by solving the figure-8 solution of the three-body problem in SAS. The physical time of a single cycle is about 6.3259 seconds, and the actual animation time is also 6.32 seconds with a time scale factor of 1. The duration is 0.04s per frame, for a total of 158 frames. In fact, the problem discussed in this article was discovered when trying to solve the three-body problem with SAS. Of course, in addition to the above frame rate selection, introducing compression techniques to SAS GIF generating is recommended to reduce the file size. Several experiments have shown that third-party tools such as GIF Optimizer can be used to reduce a GIF file's size by 90% without a significant reduction in graphics quality.
Figure3: An animation with galaxy background for the figure-8 solution of three body problem in SAS
When generating GIF animations in SAS that need to be time-accurate such as physics simulation, pay attention to the selection of the ANIMDURATION corresponding to the appropriate frame rate. When programming a GIF animation to display the analysis results, do not choose a random frame rate, or else there will be a large loss of generated frames or a time error. 8, 10, 16, 20 and 25 FPS can be chosen when there is no generated frame loss allowed and 24 FPS can be selected when a generated frame loss rate below 5% is allowed. The limitations discussed here are inherent to the GIF file specification; not due to SAS or third-party tools.
Considerations for generating time-accurate animation with SAS was published on SAS Users.
In my previous post CAS-Action! Simply Distinct - Part 1 I reviewed using the simple.distinct CAS action to explore distinct and missing values in a distributed CAS table.
Welcome back to my SAS Users blog series CAS Action! - a series on fundamentals. I've broken the series into logical, consumable parts. If you'd like to start by learning a little more about what CAS Actions are, please see CAS Actions and Action Sets - a brief intro. Or if you'd like to see other topics in the series, see the overview page.
And now, back to the distinct action. What if we want to do more? Maybe you want to create a CSV file that documents the percentage of distinct values in each column? Let's explore some possibilities.
To complete the task I'll break it down into four steps.
To find the number of rows in a CAS table use the simple.numRows CAS action. Let's execute the numRows action and store the results in a variable. I'll also PRINT and DESCRIBE the results to take a closer look at the output.
proc cas; simple.numRows result=n / table={name="cars",caslib="casuser"}; describe n; print n; ... |
And the results:
The results of the DESCRIBE statement show the output of the action is a dictionary with a key named numRows and an integer as the value. The PRINT statement shows the value of the dictionary, numRows=428.
Now that we have the total number of rows, we can use that number in our calculation.
Next, let's execute the distinct action and store the results in a variable named d. Then execute the PRINT statement to confirm the results.
...
simple.distinct result=d /
table={name="cars",caslib="casuser"};
print d;
... |
And the resluts:
The results of the distinct action are as expected. Each column with the number of distinct values.
Now that we have the number of distinct values in each column, and the total number of rows in the CARS CAS table, we can calculate the total percent of distinct values in each column.
Consider the code:
...
pctDistinct=d.Distinct.compute({"PctDistinct","Percent Distinct",percent7.2}, nDistinct/n.numRows)
[ , {"Column","NDistinct","PctDistinct"} ];
print pctDistinct;
... |
To add a calculated column to a result table use the compute operator. In the first argument, specify column metadata inside an array (column name, label and format). In the second argument, specify the expression. My expression nDistinct/n.numRows divides the distinct values in each column by the total number of rows in the CARS table.
After the compute operator, select specific rows and columns from the result table using bracket notation. Here I'll select all rows, and only the columns Column, nDistinct and PctDistinct.
Lastly, I used the PRINT statement to confirm the results.
In the output we can see the new result table with the computed column.
Lastly, let's put it all together!
I'll add the code from the pervious steps, then save the table as a CSV file using the SAVERESULTS statement with the CSV= option.
%let outpath=/*specify output file location*/; proc cas; * Specify the CAS table *; casTbl={name="cars", caslib="casuser"}; * Store the number of rows in the CAS table *; simple.numRows result=n / table=casTbl; * Store the number of distinct values in each column *; simple.distinct result=d / table=casTbl; * Calculate the percentage of distinct values in each column *; pctDistinct=d.Distinct.compute({"PctDistinct","Percent Distinct",percent7.2}, nDistinct/n.numRows) [ , {"Column","NDistinct","PctDistinct"} ]; * Save the result table as a CSV file *; saveresult pctDistinct csv="&outpath/pctDistinctCars.csv"; quit; |
In the CSV= option I specified the outpath macro variable that contains the location of output folder, and add the name of the CSV file.
After executing the code the log indicates everything ran successfully, and a CSV file was created in the specified location. Next I'll find and open the CSV file.
My CSV file is located in my outfiles folder:
Then double click on the file to open it in SAS Studio:
The distinct action is a flexible and easy way to explore your data. It allows you to quickly explore your distributed CAS tables, then process and save the results in a variety of formats to fit your needs.
distinct CAS action
CAS-Action! Simply Distinct - Part 1
CASL Result Tables
SAS® Cloud Analytic Services: Fundamentals
Code
CAS-Action! Simply Distinct - Part 2 was published on SAS Users.
Welcome back to my SAS Users blog series CAS Action! - a series on fundamentals. I've broken the series into logical, consumable parts. If you'd like to start by learning a little more about what CAS Actions are, please see CAS Actions and Action Sets - a brief intro. Or if you'd like to see other topics in the series, see the overview page. Otherwise, let's dive into exploring your data by viewing the number of distinct and missing values that exist in each column using the simple.distinct CAS action.
In this example, I will use the CAS procedure to execute the distinct action. Be aware, instead of using the CAS procedure, I could execute the same action with Python, R and more with some slight changes to the syntax for the specific language. Refer to the documentation for syntax from other languages.
To begin, let's use the simple.distinct CAS action on the CARS in-memory table to view the action's default behavior.
proc cas; simple.distinct / table={name="cars", caslib="casuser"}; quit; |
In the preceeding code, I specify the CAS procedure, the action, then reference the in-memory table. The results of the call are displayed below.
The results allow us to quickly explore the CAS table and see the number of distinct and missing values. That's great, but what if you only want to see specific columns?
Sometimes your CAS tables contain hundreds of columns, but you are only interested in a select few. With the distinct action, you can specify a subset of columns using the inputs parameter. Here I'll specify the Make, Origin and Type columns.
proc cas; simple.distinct / table={name="cars", caslib="casuser"}, inputs={"Make","Origin","Type"}; quit; |
After executing the code the results return the information for only the Make, Origin and Type columns.
Next, let's explore what we can do with the results.
Some actions allow you to create a CAS table with the results. You might want to do this for a variety of reasons like use the new CAS table in a SAS Visual Analytics dashboard or in a data visualization procedure like SGPLOT.
To create a CAS table with the distinct action result, add the casOut parameter and specify new CAS table information, like name and caslib.
proc cas; simple.distinct / table={name="cars", caslib="casuser"}, casOut={name="distinctCars", caslib="casuser"}; quit; |
After executing the code, the action returns information about the name and caslib of the new CAS table, and the number of rows and columns.
Lastly, what if you want to create a data visualization to better explore the table? Maybe you want to visualize the number of distinct values for each column? This task can be accomplished with variety of methods. However, since I know my newly created distinctCars CAS table has only 15 rows, I'll reference the CAS table directly using SGPLOT procedure.
This method works as long as the LIBNAME statement references your caslib correctly. I recommend this method when you know the CAS table is a manageable size. This is important because the CAS server does not execute the SGPLOT procedure on a distributed CAS table. The CAS server instead transfers the entire CAS table back to the client for processing.
To begin, the following LIBNAME statement will reference the casuser caslib.
libname casuser cas caslib="casuser"; |
Once the LIBNAME statement is correct, all you need to do is specify the CAS table in the DATA option of the SGPLOT procedure.
title justify=left height=14pt "Number of Distinct Values for Each Column in the CARS Table"; proc sgplot data=casuser.distinctCars noborder nowall; vbar Column / response=NDistinct categoryorder=respdesc nooutline fillattrs=(color=cx0379cd); yaxis display=(NOLABEL); xaxis display=(NOLABEL); quit; |
The results show a bar chart with the number of distinct values for each column.
The simple.distinct CAS action is an easy way to explore a distributed CAS table. With one simple action, you can easily see how many distinct values are in each column, and the number of missing rows!
In Part 2 of this post, I'll further explore the simple.distinct CAS action and offer more ideas on how to interpret and use the results.
distinct CAS action
SAS® Cloud Analytic Services: Fundamentals
Plotting a Cloud Analytic Services (CAS) In-Memory Table
Getting started with SGPLOT - Index
Code
CAS-Action! Simply Distinct - Part 1 was published on SAS Users.
When people think about sports, many things may come to mind: Screaming fans, the intensity of the game and maybe even the food. Data doesn’t usually make the list. But what people may not realize is that data is behind everything people love about sports. It can help determine how [...]
4 ways analytics are enhancing sports was published on SAS Voices by Olivia Ojeda
It’s safe to say that SAS Global Forum is a conference designed for users, by users. As your conference chair, I am excited by this year’s top-notch user sessions. More than 150 sessions are available, many by SAS users just like you. Wherever you work or whatever you do, you’ll find sessions relevant to your industry or job role. New to SAS? Been using SAS forever and want to learn something new? Managing SAS users? We have you covered. Search for sessions by industry or topic, then add those sessions to your agenda and personal calendar.
Besides two full days of amazing sessions, networking opportunities and more, many user sessions will be available on the SAS Users YouTube channel on May 20, 2021 at 10:00am ET. After you register, build your agenda and attend the sessions that most interest you when the conference begins. Once you’ve viewed a session, you can chat with the presenter. Don’t know where to start? Sample agendas are available in the Help Desk.
For the first time, proceedings will live on SAS Support Communities. Presenters have been busy adding their papers to the community. Everything is there, including full paper content, video presentations, and code on GitHub. It all premiers on “Day 3” of the conference, May 20. Have a question about the paper or code? You’ll be able to post a question on the community and ask the presenter.
Code Doctors are back this year. Check out the agenda for the specific times they’re available and make your appointment, so you’ll be sure to catch them and get their diagnosis of code errors. If you’re looking for training, you’ll be quite happy. Training is also back this year and it’s free! SAS instructor-led demos will be available on May 20, along with the user presentations on the SAS Users YouTube channel.
It is hard to replicate the buzz of a live conference, but we’ve tried our best to make you feel like you’re walking the conference floor. And we know networking is always an important component to any conference. We’ve made it possible for you to network with colleagues and SAS employees. Simply make your profile visible (by clicking on your photo) to connect with others, and you can schedule a meeting right from the attendee page. That’s almost easier than tracking down someone during the in-person event.
We know the exhibit hall is also a big draw for many attendees. This year’s Innovation Hub (formerly known as The Quad) has industry-focused booths and technology booths, where you can interact in real-time with SAS experts. There will also be a SAS Lounge where you can learn more about various SAS services and platforms such as SAS Support Communities and SAS Analytics Explorers.
I’ve highlighted a lot in this blog post, but I encourage you to view this 7-minute Innovation Hub video. It goes in depth on the Hub and all its features.
This year there is no reason not to register for SAS Global Forum…and attend as few or as many sessions as you want. Why? Because the conference is FREE!
Where else can you get such quality SAS content and learning opportunities? Nowhere, which is why I encourage you to register today. See you soon!
SAS Global Forum: Your experience, your way was published on SAS Users.
I can’t believe it’s true, but SAS Global Forum is just over a month away. I have some exciting news to share with you, so let’s start with the theme for this year:
New Day. New Answers. Inspired by Curiosity.
What a fitting theme for this year! Technology continues to evolve, so each new day is a chance to seek new answers to what can sometimes feel like impossible challenges. Our curiosity as humans drives us to seek out better ways to do things. And I hope your curiosity will drive you to register for this year’s SAS Global Forum.
We are excited to offer a global event across three regions. If you’re in the Americas, the conference is May 18-20. In Asia Pacific? Then we’ll see you May 19-20. And we didn’t forget about Europe. Your dates are May 25-26. We hope these region-specific dates and the virtual nature of the conference means more SAS users than ever will join us for an inspiring event. Curious about the exciting agenda? It’s all on the website, so check it out.
Want to be inspired to chase your “impossible” dreams? Or hear more about the future of AI? How about learning about work-life balance and your mental health? We have you covered. SAS executives are gearing up to host an exciting lineup of extremely smart, engaging and thought-provoking keynote speakers like Adam Grant, Ayesha Khanna and Hakeem Oluseyi.
And who knows, we might have a few more surprises up our sleeve. You’ll just have to register and attend to find out.
Have you joined the SAS Global Forum online community? You should, because that’s where you’ll find all the discussion around the conference…before, during and after. It’s also where you’ll find a link to the 2021 proceedings, when they become available. Authors are busy preparing their presentations now and they are hard at work staging their proceedings in the community. Join the community so you can connect with other attendees and know when the proceedings become available.
SAS Global Forum is the place where creativity meets curiosity, and amazing analytics happens! I encourage you to regularly check the conference website, as we’re continually adding new sessions and events. You don’t want to miss this year’s conference, so don’t forget to register for SAS Global Forum. See you soon!
Registration is open for a truly inspiring SAS Global Forum 2021 was published on SAS Users.
There’s nothing worse than being in the middle of a task and getting stuck. Being able to find quick tips and tricks to help you solve the task at hand, or simply entertain your curiosity, is key to maintaining your efficiency and building everyday skills. But how do you get quick information that’s ALSO engaging? By adding some personality to traditionally routine tutorials, you can learn and may even have fun at the same time. Cue the SAS Users YouTube channel.
With more than 50 videos that show personality published to-date and over 10,000 hours watched, there’s no shortage of learning going on. Our team of experts love to share their knowledge and passion (with personal flavor!) to give you solutions to those everyday tasks.
What better way to round out the year than provide a roundup of our most popular videos from 2020? Check out these crowd favorites:
We’ve got you covered! SAS will continue to publish videos throughout 2021. Subscribe now to the SAS Users YouTube channel, so you can be notified when we’re publishing new videos. Be on the lookout for some of the following topics:
2020 roundup: SAS Users YouTube channel how to tutorials was published on SAS Users.
If you’re like me and the rest of the conference team, you’ve probably attended more virtual events this year than you ever thought possible. You can see the general evolution of virtual events by watching the early ones from April or May and compare them to the recent ones. We at SAS Global Forum are studying the virtual event world, and we’re learning what works and what needs to be tweaked. We’re using that knowledge to plan the best possible virtual SAS Global Forum 2021.
Planning a good virtual event takes time, and we’re working through the process now. One thing is certain -- we know the importance of providing quality content and an engaging experience for our attendees. We want to provide attendees with the opportunity as always, but virtually, to continue to learn from other SAS users, hear about new and exciting developments from SAS, and connect and network with experts, peers, partners and SAS. Yes, I said network. We realize it won’t be the same as a live event, but we are hopeful we can provide attendees with an incredible experience where you connect, learn and share with others.
One of the differences between SAS Global Forum and other conferences is that SAS users are front and center, and the soul of the conference. We can’t have an event without user content. And that’s where you come in! The call for content opened November 17 and lasts through December 21, 2020. Selected presenters will be notified in January 2021. Presentations will be different in 2021; they will be 30 minutes in length, including time for Q&A when able. And since everything is virtual, video is a key component to your content submission. We ask for a 3-minute video along with your title and abstract.
Calling all postsecondary students -- there’s still time to build a team for the Student Symposium. If you are interested in data science and want to showcase your skills, grab a teammate or two and a faculty advisor and put your thinking caps on. Applications are due by December 21, 2020.
I encourage you to visit the SAS Global Forum website for up-to-date information, follow #SASGF on social channels and join the SAS communities group to engage with the conference team and other attendees.
Connect, learn and share during virtual SAS Global Forum 2021 was published on SAS Users.