Date: Tue, 14 Dec 1999 17:04:52 -0700
Reply-To: steve.doig@asu.edu
Sender: "SAS(r) Discussion" <SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From: Steve Doig <steve.doig@ASU.EDU>
Organization: Arizona State University
Subject: Re: SAS Coder's Contest
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
John Whittington wrote in part:
> I would personally be more inclined to go for 'quality', rather than speed
> - and thus change the rule dramatically - such that all 'correct' answers
> (in the sense that they would work) received before -such-and-such a
> day/time would be examined, and Charles, at his discretion, would choose
> the 'best one'. Maybe everyone who got a correct, but not 'best' solution,
> might be offered a small 'consolation prize' (although I realise this would
> be a potentially open-ended financial committment for the sponsors).
Good idea. I'm continually amazed at the wide variety of solutions offered on
SAS-L, and I think it's very instructive to see that range. So no matter how you
decide the "winner", I'd suggest that all reasonable solutions be posted on the
web site. That recognition could be the consolation prize.
As it happens, last summer I ran a one-time "ugly data contest" on a
computer-assisted reporting list I frequent. It involved cracking an ASCII
dataset that was lacking end-of-record delimiters and had several other bits of
messiness about it. I did it as part of my guerilla campaign to persuade more
journalists to start learning SAS instead of using MS Access and such. I
received about a dozen entries using all sorts of software and some very clever
algorithms. The solutions were much discussed on the list, and my relatively
compact SAS solution did generate a lot of interest. (But I do have to add that
the very neatest solution was one line of Perl!)
Steve Doig
--
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Stephen K. Doig, Knight Chair in Journalism
Cronkite School of Journalism, Arizona State University
Campus Box 871305, Tempe, AZ 85287-1305
Voice:480-965-0798 Fax:480-965-7041 mailto:steve.doig@asu.edu
http://www.asu.edu/cronkite/faculty/doig/index.html
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