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Interview with Author Warren Kuhfeld

Author Warren Kuhfeld takes time out of his busy schedule to discuss his new book Statistical Graphics in SAS: An Introduction to the Graph Template Language and the Statistical Graphics Procedures with Authorline.

• Authorline (AL): What was your motivation for writing Statistical Graphics in SAS: An Introduction to the Graph Template Language and the Statistical Graphics Procedures?
• Warren Kuhfeld (WK): The GTL and the SG procedures provide powerful capabilities for producing great-looking graphs! While the SAS documentation provides incredible details on the syntax of these two methods, it does not provide a series of getting started examples. I find that I learn best by looking at examples, so my goal was to provide SAS users with a set of examples to help them get started using these two great new methods of making graphs.

• (AL): Who will benefit from your book? (WK): If you need to make graphs of data or results, if you use SAS/GRAPH, SAS/STAT, SAS/ETS, or other analytical products, you will benefit from this book.

• (AL): Tell us a little about your own involvement with using Graph Template Language and SAS Statistical Graphics.
• (WK): I am a procedure writer, so I use the GTL in my job for creating graphs from my SAS procedures. I wrote the chapter on the GTL and the SG procedures for the SAS/STAT documentation. I am part of the committee that reviews the graphs in SAS/STAT and SAS/ETS.

• (AL): What features of the book are you especially pleased with?
• (WK): I am particularly pleased with the parallel introduction approach that I took where I show how to make the same graph with the GTL and with the SG procedures.

• (AL): How did you decide to publish with SAS?
• (WK): Since this is a book about SAS software and I work at SAS, it was an obvious choice.

• (AL): What advice would you give to potential authors?
• (WK): If you are an experienced SAS user, you might have a book in you too. Is there something that you do all of the time and do really well? If so, then you know a lot that can help other SAS users. Consider writing a book about it. I found it to be a fun process, and it is rewarding to know that others will benefit from my experience.

• (AL): How were you able to balance your time between your career and writing this book?
• (WK): I knew this material well enough that it was not too hard to write a book about it. Some days I would get to work early and work on it. Some days I worked through my lunch hour. Some days I stayed late. I worked some weekend days, and I took a few vacation days. If you can devote 5 or 10 hours a week to it, you can get it out pretty quickly. Here in SAS/STAT R&D, we have such great tools for writing and capturing output (the Saslatex system that we use for our documentation), that it really makes it easy to get everything together and looking great.