Summer 2022 Offerings from WUSS

As we eagerly anticipate our return to in-person events, WUSS is offering an assortment of webinars and classes over the summer to tide us over until we can convene in San Francisco this September. Join us for free webinars as well as an encore of our two half-day SAS Essentials training courses, back by popular demand!

To register for the classes and/or the free webinars, please use the following link:

SAS Essentials is free for WUSS 2022 Conference Attendees! When you pay for one or both of the WUSS 2022 SAS Essentials classes, you’ll receive a discount code that can be used towards registration for WUSS 2022 equal to the cost of those classes. If you take both SAS Essentials 1 & 2, you’ll receive $300 off WUSS 2022 registration ($50 for students)!

¹ Paid class attendees will receive a discount code for $150 off registration ($25 for students) for WUSS 2022 Conference and Educational Forum in San Francisco for each SAS Essentials class taken. Discount is non-transferable.

² Full-time students in either the 2021-2022 or 2022-2023 academic year. Documentation required (student ID, registration confirmation, etc.).

View the Refund Policy

Course Descriptions

Simmering Data: Using Beautiful Soup and Python to Scrape Data from Web Pages
Joe Matise
Thursday, June 14, 2022, 10:00am-11:00am Pacific Time

Ever look at a table on a web page and wished you had it in a data set? You probably took one look at the source of the web page and then decided it wasn’t worth the hassle. SAS has some tools to help, but oftentimes tables have too much complexity to parse without hours of work. Instead, parse the web page on easy mode using Python – even if you don’t know any Python!

In this webinar, we will show an option using a Python library, Beautiful Soup, that allows users to easily navigate even fairly complex web pages, and quickly pull tables into Pandas DataFrames. Once in a Pandas DataFrame, that data can be easily uploaded to SAS for further processing.

This webinar will be useful for users at any level of SAS programming, and assumes no knowledge of Python.

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SAS Essentials (or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Code) Part 1
Tasha Chapman and Lisa Mendez
Tuesday, June 28, 2022, 10:00am-2:00pm Pacific Time

Part 1: DATA steps and data manipulation (or How to Train Your SAS Datasets)

SAS Essentials is an instructor-led course that provides a thorough introduction to the basics of SAS programming. In this session we’ll walk through the fundamental building blocks of a SAS program with a deep dive into DATA steps and data manipulation, including SAS libraries, conditional processing, functions, and more.

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SAS Essentials (or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Code) Part 2
Tasha Chapman and Lisa Mendez
Tuesday, July 12, 2022, 10:00am-2:00pm Pacific Time

Part 2: PROC steps and basic reporting (or How to Succeed in SAS Without Really Trying)

SAS Essentials is an instructor-led course that provides a thorough introduction to the basics of SAS programming. This session will feature a showcase of the most common reporting procedures, including MEANS, FREQ, PRINT, TABULATE, and REPORT. We’ll also walk through the Output Delivery System and how it can be used to build professional reports the easy way.

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Professional Growth – An Adventure for Those who Seek It
Moderated by Bill Coar
Panelists: Janette Garner, Carey Smoak, Richann Watson, and Josh Horstman
Wednesday, August 3, 2022, 11:00am-12:00pm Pacific Time

Professional growth essentially refers to gaining new skills and work experience that can help you reach a goal in your career. While it sounds simple enough on the surface, it’s personal. Each one of us has our own definition of what it means and how it applies to our own career paths. For many of us, transferring that to a concrete actionable plan can be daunting.

In this webinar, we ask four industry leaders to share their thoughts on their own professional growth journey. The panelists will speak on leadership, collaboration, and volunteering in the professional community, followed by a Q&A discussion led by you – the audience. At the conclusion of the webinar, we will ask each panelist to recommend at least one actionable thing that we can do today to help us on the road of professional growth.

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WUSS 2022, in Collaboration with PharmaSUG, Presents Really Cool SAS Tricks
Troy Hughes, Louise Hadden, and Richann Watson
Tuesday, August 9, 2022, 11:00am-12:00pm Pacific Time

Western Users of SAS Software, in collaboration with PharmaSUG, is proud to present a two-for-one deal: Two hot SAS presentations in one webinar! Join Troy Hughes, Louise Hadden, and Richann Watson as they answer important questions like “How do I survive this boring conference call?” and “Should I wear pants?” Learn how to use ODS Graphics, Decision Tables, and many other cool SAS tips and tricks to make your work day easier and more entertaining.

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  Should I Wear Pants in the Portuguese Expanse? Automating Business Rules and Decision Rules Through Reusable Decision Table Data Structures that Leverage SAS Arrays

  Decision tables operationalize one or more contingencies and the respective actions that should be taken when contingencies are true. Decision tables capture conditional logic in dynamic control tables rather than hardcoded programs, facilitating maintenance and modification of the business rules and decision rules they contain—without the necessity to modify the underlying code (that interprets and operationalizes the decision tables). This text introduces a flexible, data-driven SAS® macro that ingests decision tables— maintained as comma-separated values (CSV) files—into SAS to dynamically write conditional logic statements that can subsequently be applied to SAS data sets. This metaprogramming technique relies on SAS temporary arrays that can accommodate limitless contingency groups and contingencies of any content. To illustrate the extreme adaptability and reusability of the software solution, several decision tables are demonstrated, including those that separately answer the questions Should I wear pants and Where should I travel in the Portuguese expanse? The DECISION_TABLE SAS macro is included and is adapted from the author’s text: SAS® Data-Driven Development: From Abstract Design to Dynamic Functionality (Hughes, 2019).

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  “Bored”-Room Buster Bingo – Create Bingo Cards Using SAS®️ ODS Graphics

  Let’s admit it! We have all been on a conference call that just … well to be honest, it was just bad. Your misery could be caused by any number of reasons – or multiple reasons! The audio quality was bad, the conversation got sidetracked and focus of the meeting was no longer what it was intended, there could have been too much background noise, someone hasn’t muted their laptop and is breathing heavily – the list goes on ad nauseum. Regardless of why the conference call is less than satisfactory, you want it to end, but professional etiquette demands that you remain on the call. We have the answer – SAS®-generated Conference Call Bingo! Not only is Conference Call Bingo entertaining, but it also keeps you focused on the conversation and enables you to obtain the pertinent information the conference call may offer. This paper and presentation introduce a method of using SAS to create custom Conference Call Bingo cards, moving through brainstorming and collecting entries for Bingo cards, random selection of items, and the production of bingo cards using SAS reporting techniques and the Graphic Template Language (GTL). (You are on your own for the chips and additional entries based on your own painful experiences)! The information presented is appropriate for all levels of SAS programming and all industries.

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Meet the Presenters

	Tasha Chapman has been using SAS since 2003 and an active member of the SAS User Community since 2006. Throughout her career she has championed continuing education and professional development, presented trainings and workshops at professional conferences across the country, sat as an executive committee member on nationally recognized associations, and founded two organizations dedicated to educating colleagues about research, data, and statistics. She was the chair of the Western Users of SAS Software Conference and Educational Forum in 2017. Tasha received a Master’s Degree in Psychology, with an emphasis on personality assessment and psychometrics from the University of California, Riverside. Since 2005 she has worked for the State of Oregon as a lead research analyst providing data and policy analysis for Oregon OSHA, the Oregon Child Welfare Program, and the Oregon Health Authority. She lives in Salem, Oregon with her two adorable kids, Nadia and Atlas. Back to top
	Bill Coar is a Director of Biostatistics at Axio Research, a Cytel Company. He has been using SAS for over 20 years. He has been involved with PharmaSUG, WUSS, SAS Global Forum, and the Section for Statistical Programmers and Analysts of the American Statistical Association. Back to top
	Janette Garner is an Associate Director at Bristol Myers Squibb. She has been a SAS programmer since 2007 and has been building a career as a statistical programmer in the pharmaceutical and biotech industry. During her career she has taken on increasing responsibility both as an individual contributor and as a people manager. Janette has presented multiple papers at WUSS and PharmaSUG on a variety of topics ranging from statistical graphics to leadership. Janette holds a bachelor’s in Applied Mathematics from University of California, San Diego and a Masters in Statistics from San Diego State University. Back to top
	Louise Hadden has been using, and loving, SAS since the days of punch cards and computers the size of a not-so-tiny house. She spends most of her time in support of health policy analytics at Abt Associates Inc., and loves a good SAS reporting challenge. She is also the girl with the SAS tattoo! Back to top
	Josh Horstman is an independent statistical programmer based in Indianapolis with 20 years’ experience using SAS in the life sciences industry. He specializes in analyzing clinical trial data, and his clients have included major pharmaceutical corporations, biotech companies, and research organizations. A SAS Certified Advanced Programmer, Josh loves coding and is a frequent presenter at SAS Global Forum and various regional and local SAS users’ group. Josh holds a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and computer science, and a master’s degree in statistics from Colorado State University. Back to top
	Troy Martin Hughes has been a SAS practitioner for more than 20 years, has managed SAS projects in support of federal, state, and local government initiatives, and is a SAS Certified Advanced Programmer, SAS Certified Base Programmer, SAS Certified Clinical Trials Programmer, and SAS Professional V8. He has given more than 100 presentations, trainings, and hands-on workshops at SAS conferences, including at SAS Global Forum, SAS Analytics Experience, WUSS, SCSUG, SESUG, MWSUG, PharmaSUG, BASAS, and BASUG. He has authored two groundbreaking books that model software design and development best practices: SAS® Data-Driven Development: From Abstract Design to Dynamic Functionality, Second Edition (2021) SAS® Data Analytic Development: Dimensions of Software Quality (2016) Troy has an MBA in information systems management as well as other credentials, including: PMP, PMI-RMP, PMI-PBA, PMI-ACP, SSCP, CISSP, CSSLP, Network+, Security+, CySA+, CASP+, CISA, CGEIT, CISM, CRISC, ITIL Foundation, CSM, CSD, A-CSD, CSPO, CSP, CSP-SM, CSP-PO, and SAFe Government Practitioner (SGF). He is a US Navy veteran with two tours of duty in Afghanistan. Back to top
	Joe Matise has been a SAS programmer and administrator for the past 15 years, working primarily in Survey Research. He is an active member of the SAS community, and can be found on the SAS-L Listserv, answering on the SAS tag on StackOverflow, and on SAS Communities from time to time. At home he and his wife, Tam, have two children who keep them constantly on their toes. Back to top
	Lisa Mendez has been a SAS user for over 20 years and is currently a Senior MEPRS Analyst and Training Specialist with Emerge Solutions Group. She has presented SAS programming papers at many SAS User Group forums. She holds a BS and MS in Computer Information Systems, a MS in Data Science, and a PhD in Education, with a concentration in Organizational Leadership with an Adult Education certification. Back to top
	Carey Smoak retired last year. He is a co-founder and co-leader of the CDISC Medical Device team. Carey has 39 years of experience with using SAS software. His first 15 years, he worked in academia. For the past 24 years, he has worked for medical device (11 years) and pharma / biotech (13 years) companies. He has been involved in more than 20 products that have been cleared / approved by the FDA. He has more than 60 publications to his credit and is a frequent speaker at conferences and meetings. His areas of expertise include in-vitro diagnostic devices, companion diagnostics, vaccines, thrombosis drugs, oncology drugs and other therapeutic areas. Back to top
	Richann Watson is an independent statistical programmer and CDISC consultant based in Ohio. She has been using SAS since 1996 with most of her experience being in the life sciences industry. She specializes in analyzing clinical trial data and implementing CDISC standards. Additionally, she is a member of the CDISC ADaM team and various sub-teams. Richann loves to code and is an active participant and leader in the SAS User Group community. She has presented numerous papers, posters, and training seminars at SAS Global Forum, PharmaSUG, and various regional and local SAS user group meetings. Richann holds a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and computer science from Northern Kentucky University and master’s degree in statistics from Miami University. Back to top

Refund Policy

Refunds for paid classes are only available upon request received up to 3 business days prior to the start of the class. Any refunds will deduct $25 per attendee per paid class for losses due to credit card processing and online registration charges. However, attendee substitutions are free at any time. Contact Western Users of SAS Software at registrar@wuss.org for substitution information or to request a refund.

If paid classes are canceled by WUSS, the registrant will receive a full refund.

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