James H. Goodnight, co-founder of the company that produced the statistical software company "Statistical Analysis System" (SAS, though today SAS is just a brand name) and its current chief executive, started out at the argicultural statistics department at North Carolina State University, has gone from academic to one of the few Ph.D.s who are currently billionaires. The NY Times has an article that focuses on the business aspects of SAS, Mr. Goodnight, the company's development (though I think that the history is very sketchy), and its coming battle in the "business intelligence" market with IBM (which has acquired SPSS; IBM will continue to use the SPSS brand, not PASW) and other companies. It might be of some interest to folks, especially those that use SAS or SPSS in their teaching, because it provides some insight in where these companies are going and who they think will be their most important customers in the future (hint: it's not academia). See: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/22/business/22sas.html?_r=1&th=&emc=th&pagewanted=all
Looks like a lot of people will be developing skills in R programming. -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
