The Applications Development section will present a wide array of papers on topics including SAS macro design, maximizing performance, and data cleaning. Presentations on the different ways that SAS can be customized, extended, and used in concert with other software packages to develop or improve a process will also be included. Other speakers will describe how to exploit SAS modules that can significantly improve performance and sustainability. Authors come from different industries will give step-by-step instructions describing a process. This is an outstanding opportunity to see how a project or industry-specific solution is accomplished, such as projects within drug development, predictive modeling, customer retention, healthcare, insurance or other business applications.
Building Blocks is intended for SAS® programmers at all levels, from beginner to advanced, and includes SAS topics that are key to becoming an expert SAS user. Appropriate topics include fundamentals such as DATA step manipulations and simple SAS procedures (PROC REPORT, PROC FORMAT, etc.) as well as advanced topics in ODS, Macro programming, SQL, and programming efficiency. These presentations will provide beginners with a greater understanding of how to use SAS and will help more advanced programmers implement enhanced techniques to build on the power and flexibility afforded by SAS software. Programming topics across all fields and industries are encouraged and welcome.
Every SAS® programmer from the beginner to the expert has found new or unusual ways to solve problems with SAS. Coders' Corner is the place to share tips and tricks, useful nuggets of programming, or techniques that make jobs easier. Presentations are 10 minutes in length and can come from any of a broad range of topics. Come and learn what simple tricks can unlock a SAS mystery?
From the beginning, data manipulation and data integration have been mainstays of SAS® software. Since then it has grown to include a full suite of data management capabilities including Data Quality, Data Flux, Data Governance, Master Data Management, and Data Federation. This section intends to highlight the capabilities of traditional Base SAS and SAS Data Management as well as the various ways SAS leverages Big Data. These presentations will include case studies demonstrating techniques and implementations, while providing helpful insights, and lessons learned along the way.
The e-Poster Section covers any area including: SAS® fundamentals; statistics; business intelligence; medical research, data mining; survey/panel results; social networking; and industry applications for the pharmaceutical, finance, education, environmental and entertainment industries; and all other uses of SAS software. e-Posters will be displayed electronically on a wide screen monitor. In addition, a corresponding paper based upon the poster will be published in the conference proceedings. There will also be a time to meet authors to discuss their e-Posters with conference attendees (Meet the Presenter session). Attendees will have the opportunity to examine e-Posters at their own pace and revisit displays a number of times during the conference.
These extended sessions will be presented utilizing a live SAS® session where the presenter will demonstrate code and procedures in real time with a specific task or goal in mind to accomplish within the 75-minute HOW session. The datasets and code will also be available for download prior to the session, enabling attendees to submit the code on their personal computers if desired. This session is best for step-by-step presentation of:
Papers in the Life Sciences/Healthcare/Insurance section will focus on using the SAS® System to find solutions for analysis and reporting as it relates to drug/device discovery, disease prevention, patient care and satisfaction, insurance risk and operations. Possible topics include:
Discussions of the use of SAS® Drug Development, SAS® Clinical Data Integration and SAS Patient Safety.
Various aspects of implementing CDISC standards such as the Study Data Tabulation Model (SDTM) and the Analysis Data Model (ADaM).
Solutions to reporting and data processing requirements.
The use of healthcare data to evaluate quality of care, possible fraud and patient satisfaction.
If all or part of your SAS® time includes supporting users, whether through systems architecture and administration or through consulting, training, and hiring, this section is the place for you to share your experiences with other members of the SAS community. This section will include guidelines, best practices, techniques, and resources for working efficiently and effectively in the SAS support community. Possible topics are:
SAS Systems architecture and administration, including:
Installation, deployment, and migration
Virtualization
Performance monitoring and tuning
Other SAS systems support, including:
Recruiting, hiring and maintaining qualified staff
The Reporting and Information Visualization/JMP® section contains presentations that demonstrate visualizing and presenting data in unique and innovative ways. While analytic data sets continue to grow in size and breadth, visual representation and interactive techniques allow users to intuitively explore, discover and comprehend large amounts of information. SAS® provides many tools in many different products for visualizing and reporting data and outputting results. JMP® was designed to explore and discover hidden stories and trends in data. We would like to hear about innovative uses of both SAS and JMP software, including scenarios where integration between JMP and SAS has made a major impact. Topics include but are not limited to:
SAS Styles, Templates, Output Delivery System (ODS) and Graphics Template Language (GTL)
Customized reports, dashboards, scorecards, graphs and maps
SAS Visual Analytics
JMP applications
SAS and/or JMP integration with systems and products such as Microsoft Windows, Mac OS, R, Python, and MATLAB
Presentations in the Statistics and Data Analysis section address the transformation of raw data into beneficial inferences and explanatory models through a wide variety of statistical techniques and processes. This section will include topics that will interest a broad spectrum of SAS® practitioners, including analysts, developers, statisticians, and DATA step programmers with presentations ranging from basic applications to complex analyses.
Topics for this section include, but are not limited to:
Methods for categorical, longitudinal, repeated measures, mixed models or censored data
Techniques to facilitate the analysis of very large data arrays, such as those that result from genetic studies, national surveys, transactional or unstructured data
Explanatory time series algorithms such as Unobserved Components Models
Creative transformations independent variables with tools such as regression splines
Machine learning techniques for variable selection and transformation such as Multivariate Adaptive Regression Splines (MARS/ADAPTIVEREG)
And explorations of the capabilities of new SAS procedures such as HPGENSELECT, HPSPLIT and GAMPL
