Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank all the technical reviewers, including Paul Grant, Elizabeth Axelrod, Michele Ensor, and Grace Whiteis, who provided invaluable feedback. They are also grateful to the SAS Press staff. Both groups helped make this book a reality.

We would also like to thank the R&D team at SAS for implementing the powerful facilities of the SAS hash object.

Special thanks to the customers whose challenging business intelligence requirements led us to research how to address those requirements. Results of that research led us to write this book in order to share that knowledge. Special thanks to Rich N and Paulius M of a large health insurance company and to Tom H of a regional supermarket co-op’s marketing department.

Conversations on various online communities (e.g., http://communities.sas.com) also provided much food for thought.

Paul would like to thank Don for his idea to write this book in the first place, for spearheading the effort all the way through, and for his energy and organizational skill, without which the book would never have seen the light of day. Furthermore, Paul would like to thank Don for discovering new capabilities of the hash object, for invigorating and edifying discussions, and for patience with his coauthor's quirks, which he calls "dorfmanisms". Last but not least, he would like to thank Don for introducing him to the data-rich game of baseball and taking the education process as far as treating him to a real game at Fenway Park.

Paul owes special gratitude to his wife, Doris Dorfman, for her infinite patience and support for his effort despite its immense impact on the family schedule. Finally, Paul is deeply indebted to his mother, Eugenia Kravchenko, not only for making him (and hence this book) happen but also for her relentless enthusiastic encouragement since the first day this book was conceived.

Don would like to thank several of his fellow baseball blog colleagues at the blog TalkNats.com, a forum for baseball fans who motivated him to start analyzing baseball data and provided suggestions for the rules of game Bizarro Ball: Stephen Mears, Bob Schiff (who coined the term Bizarro Ball to describe this game), Stephen Mahaney, and Andrew Lang. The sample data for this book is based on the fictional game Bizarro Ball.

Don would also like to thank Paul for enlightening him about all the things that could be done with the SAS hash object and indulging him to use sample data about a game like baseball. And, lest he forget, special thanks to his wife, Celia Henderson, for her patience and understanding when he would disappear for hours and days at a time using the excuse that I need to work on the book.