Dinner on the Town

We'll have sign-up sheets so that you can connect with like-minded attendees to have dinner on Tuesday at area restaurants This is a great opportunity for dinner and conversation with old and new friends. (Dinner will be at your own expense.)

Tuesday Night KickBack Party

Gather with everyone you have met throughout the conference to relax and enjoy music, dancing, and NESUG  camaraderie. Music will be provided by A House on Fire, a six-piece ensemble providing a wide variety of music. The group will deliver all styles from jam to reggae, pop, R & B, country, and rock, as well as acoustic music.  

Fantastic Presentations

Of course the main reason we all come to the NESUG conference is for the wide variety of fascinating and thought-provoking presentations taught by some of the top SAS experts anywhere. Here's a very short list of some that you might want to catch:

What You're Missing About Missing Values 
Christopher Bost, MDRC

Alternative Methods for Sorting Large Files without Leaving a Big Disk Space Footprint 
Rita Volya, Harvard Medical School

Making Sense of PROC TABULATE 
Jonas Bilenas, Barclays UK&E RBB

A Quick View of SAS Views 
Elizabeth Axelrod, Abt Associates Inc.

A Many to Many Merge, Without SQL? 
David Franklin, TheProgrammersCabin.com

A Tutorial on the SAS® Macro Language 
John Cohen, Advanced Data Concepts, LLC

Panel Discussion - As the World Turns: Aspects of Managing in a SAS® Shop 
Vincent Amoruccio,  Todd Case,  Margaret Coughlin
Alexion Pharmaceuticals, Biogen Idec, Accenture @ Merck

Pooling Strategy for Clinical Data 
Abraham Yeh,  ShinRu Wang,  Xiaohong Zhang, Novartis

OUT= is on the Way Out. Use ODS OUTPUT Instead 
Stanley Fogleman, Harvard Clinical Research Institute

Behind the Scenes with SAS®: Using Custom Graphics in SAS® Output 
Louise Hadden, Abt Associates Inc.

Click here for detailed abstracts and a full list of the over 125 presentations and workshops.

Free Wi-Fi at NESUG 2013

While you're learning about all of these topics, you can stay connected to your office and colleagues. Attendees will have access to free wireless internet service in hotel rooms and the conference area. In addition, we'll be setting aside a room in the conference area with tables and chairs so you can comfortably communicate. So you'll always be able to stay in touch while at the conference.

Technical Tip

Here is a Technical Tip from Dr Jennifer Waller with just a taste of what she will be presenting in her Hands-on Workshop "How to Use ARRAYs and DO Loops: Do I DO OVER or Do I DO i?"

Jennifer is an Associate Professor of Biostatistics at Georgia  Regents University in Augusta, GA where she has worked since 1997. She teaches, consults, and does collaborative research. She has been using SAS since 1989 (you do the math).

DO OVER!

The DO OVER loop is one of the most useful DO loops I have discovered in SAS®. It can be used with an array when indexing of the array is not needed. If an operation needs to be performed on all elements and there is no need to keep track of what element of the array is being referenced, then there may be no reason to define the array with an index and no need to created an iterative DO loop. For example, for surveys with questions that indicate the respondent should check all that apply, many times the items that are not checked (meaning they don't apply) are not entered and the data are missing for those variables. However, the response isn't really missing, rather it is "no". So you want to change the missing values to some non-missing value. If there are tons of these items (variables) but you don't know how many there are you can set up a non-indexed array and use a DO OVER loop. While there are ways to determine the dimension of an array, sometimes you just don't need to.

The key to using the DO OVER loop is that the operations between the DO OVER and END statements will be performed over ALL elements in the array. One advantage is that the number of array elements does not need to be known. A second advantage is that when referencing the arrayname in the operations to perform within the DO OVER loop, no index is needed. You reference the array like you would a variable name but you use the arrayname. The syntax for the DO OVER loop is

          ARRAY arrayname list_of_array_elements;

          DO OVER arrayname;

             operations;

          END;

Ex:     Three questions on a questionnaire are check-all-that-apply questions. The first question has items q1_1-q1_6, the second question has four items q2_1-q2_7, and the third question has seven items q3_1-q3_13. The data look like this:

While you could count up the number of variables and use an indexed array and iterative DO loop, you don't want to. So instead, you set up the ARRAY and DO OVER loop and change the missing values to 0 using the SAS code below.

data one;

array amisszero q1_1-q1_6 q2_1-q2_7 q3_1-q3_13;

doover amisszero;

   if amisszero=.then amisszero=0;

end;

run;

The resulting data are as follows:

Try it yourself and see that using the DO OVER allows you to perform a set of operations on an array without having to index the array in the operations.

Now it's easier than ever to stay in touch with NESUG throughout the year.  Follow the latest developments as we plan for the conference, find out about upcoming local meetings in your area, and much more. 

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