HASUG MEETING ANNOUNCEMENT -Thursday, November 21, 2013

[Charles Patridge]

HASUG MEETING ANNOUNCEMENT AND DIRECTIONS

Our next meeting is on: Thursday, November 21, 2013 at
The Hartford
One Hartford Plaza
Hartford, CT 06155
from 9:00 am to noon
Registration will be open until noon on Tuesday, November 19th. 
Please bring a photo ID.
Refreshments to be served, and time for conversation, beginning at 8:30 AM

Our Topics and Speakers will be:

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Dropping Sparsely Populated Variables

Craig Dickstein, Tamarack Professional Services, LLC

Often with large government healthcare datasets sparseness exists to the point where a variable may have few or no values at all. For efficiency sake it would be nice to DROP these sparse variables from the dataset. Using features of ODS, PROC FREQ, and PROC SQL, a macro is demonstrated that programmatically decides how to deal with this sparseness and reports on the results.

Craig Dickstein, an independent Consultant, works with clients and select project teams to implement customized business solutions for the healthcare industry. He has significant past experience managing and developing SAS applications and has been a SAS user since 1978. With an MS in Statistics and meaningful work experience in medical research, health insurance, and large database structures, he adds value to the resolution of specific client business needs. Craig has a long history of SAS user group involvement as both an organizer and invited speaker.

Using SAS Enterprise Guide to Build and Maintain Systems

Clint Rickards, GE Capital Retail Bank

SAS Enterprise Guide is traditionally used to facilitate reporting and modeling. While it certainly excels in that role, for a number of years we have also been using EG to build and maintain systems and applications. This presentation will describe our GECRB’s SAS environment, introduce EG, and show how we use EG to build and maintain systems. The presentation will necessarily be focused on our Linux environment but many of the concepts and techniques should be applicable to other environments.

Clint Rickards has been a SAS user for nearly 30 years in a number of different industries including life insurance, health insurance, pharmaceuticals and, for the last 8 years, credit cards at GE Capital. He recently became the SAS Platform Administrator for GE Capital Retail Bank. He has presented often at HASUG and other local groups, NESUG (lamenting the passing of its conferences), and SUGI/SGF.

The HASUG Flash is also available on the www.HASUG.org website.  In addition, directions to the next meeting site can be found on our website.

Look forward to seeing you there.  Please feel free to pass this invitation on to your colleagues.

Remember, you will need to register for this meeting by going to our website.

If your employer is able to host one of our future meetings (approx 40-60 people), please contact one of the HASUG steering committee members.  We are always looking for new sites to have our meetings.

And finally, if you are able and willing, please consider volunteering to present a paper to the HASUG group.  It is a great way to practice presenting, widening your network, and gaining exposure for your career development.  You only need to contact one of the HASUG committee members and we will consider your paper and topic for a future meeting.

The HASUG Steering Committee