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John Sall

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John Sall
Born1948 (age 75–76)
Rockford, Illinois, US
Occupation(s)Co-founder and executive vice president, SAS Institute
SpouseGinger
Children4

John P. Sall (born 1948) is an American billionaire businessman and computer software developer, who co-founded SAS Institute, an analytics software company, and created the JMP statistical software.

Early life and education

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John Sall was born in Rockford, Illinois in 1948.[1] As a child, he developed an interest in science.[2]

He received a bachelor's degree in history from Beloit College in Beloit, Wisconsin. Sall felt he graduated into a weak job market, so he went to graduate school at Northern Illinois University, where he earned a master's degree in economics. It was at graduate school that Sall became interested in statistics and computer science.[3] He went on to study graduate-level statistics at North Carolina State University, where he received an honorary doctorate in 2003.[4][5][6] He received an honorary doctorate from NIU in 2014.[7]

Career

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Main articles: SAS Institute and SAS (software)

Sall collaborated with James Goodnight at North Carolina State University.[8][9][1] In 1976, the two co-founded SAS Institute, an analytics software company, with fellow NCSU alumni Anthony James Barr and Jane Helwig.[8][5]

The company is best known for developing the SAS suite of analytics and data management software. Sall designed, developed, and documented many of the earliest procedures of the SAS language.[5] Some of his contributions included procedures for working with time series, econometrics, categorical data and matrix algebraic manipulations.[10] SAS software was originally developed to analyze agricultural data,[11] but its modern applications include machine learning, natural language processing, deep learning, and computer vision.[12]

SAS Institute grew rapidly,[13] becoming one of the largest privately held software providers in the world[14] and earning $3.2 billion in annual revenue as of 2022.[15] In 2021, it was announced that the company was preparing for an initial public offering (IPO).[16] During this time, the company has invested heavily into the research and development of artificial intelligence tools designed for industries like finance, healthcare, and insurance.[12][17]

JMP

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Main article: JMP (statistical software)

Sall started developing JMP, which originally stood for "John's Macintosh Project", in the 1980s, when the graphical user interface was introduced on the Macintosh.[1][9] JMP is distributed by JMP Statistical Discovery, LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of SAS.[18] Sall and a small team of developers spent a year and a half working on JMP before version one was released in October 1989.[19] Sall continued to do coding and product development for JMP software for more than 20 years, supporting Windows 3.1, writing the product in different implementation languages, re-writing the product's "nervous system" and improving the JMP scripting language.[19] Today Sall still acts as JMP's chief architect.[1]

He also co-authored the book JMP Start Statistics with Ann Lehman and Lee Creighton.[20]

Personal life

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Sall lives in Cary, North Carolina. He is married to Ginger Sall, with whom he has four children.[8]

Sall was elected Fellow of the American Statistical Association in 1998 and Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2015,[21] he is also a member of the North Carolina State University board of trustees. In 1994, he served as chairman of the Interface Foundation of North America.[22] He received the Distinguished Alumnus Award from North Carolina State University's College of Sciences in 2017.[23]

Philanthropy and wealth

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Sall owns about one-third of SAS Institute, while Goodnight owns the remainder.[8]  According to Forbes, Sall's net worth was approximately $4.2 billion as of 2016, making him the 392nd richest person in the United States at the time.[24] As of 2009, most of Sall's net worth was illiquid, and based on the estimated worth of his partial ownership in SAS Institute. In 2018,[25] Sall was still working, doing programming, and leading a team of developers.[1]

Sall and his wife are involved in conservation, international health and development, and environmental issues through the Sall Family Foundation.[26] Sall was on the board of The Nature Conservancy from 2002 to 2011,[5] and is a member of the board for the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.[24] Sall and his wife also work with the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), CARE, Pan American Health Organization, and other non-profits.[3][7] They contributed to the founding of Cary Academy, an independent college preparatory school for students grades six through 12.[4][5]

References

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  1. ^ a b c d e Lai, Eric (September 18, 2009). "Billionaire SAS co-founder keeps on Coding". Computerworld. Retrieved December 15, 2011.
  2. ^ Vellanki, Bhamini (2020-07-27). "Leadership Profile: John P. Sall, Founder of SAS Institute". The Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University. Retrieved 2024-03-05.
  3. ^ a b Ohri, Ajay (July 28, 2000). "Interview John Sall Founder JMP/SAS Institute". DecisionStats. Retrieved December 15, 2011.
  4. ^ a b "John Sall profile". North Carolina State University Board of Trustees. Retrieved December 15, 2011.
  5. ^ a b c d e "John Sall Biography". Northern Illinois University. 2010. Archived from the original on December 5, 2012. Retrieved December 15, 2011.
  6. ^ "Official SAS Biography". SAS Institute. Retrieved December 15, 2011.
  7. ^ a b "NIU Today - Co-founder of SAS Institute to receive honorary NIU doctorate". NIU Today. Retrieved 2024-09-26.
  8. ^ a b c d "Forbes profile". Forbes. September 20, 2007. Retrieved December 15, 2011.
  9. ^ a b "Official JMP biography". JMP. Retrieved December 15, 2011.
  10. ^ Agresti, Alan; Meng, Xiao-Li (2012-11-02). Strength in Numbers: The Rising of Academic Statistics Departments in the U. S. Springer Science & Business Media. p. 177. ISBN 978-1-4614-3649-2.
  11. ^ Lohr, Steve (November 21, 2009). "At a Software Powerhouse, the Good Life Is Under Siege". The New York Times. Retrieved October 2, 2024.
  12. ^ a b Coletti, Claudine (March 19, 2019). "SAS Announces $1 Billion Investment In AI". Forbes ME. Retrieved 2024-10-02.
  13. ^ Buchanan, Leigh (September 2011). "How SAS Continues to Grow". Inc. Magazine. Retrieved October 2, 2024.
  14. ^ Gordon, Brian (September 28, 2023). "SAS eliminates more positions this week as part of its 2023 staff reduction plan". The News & Observer.
  15. ^ Gordon, Brian (September 28, 2023). "SAS eliminates more positions this week as part of its 2023 staff reduction plan". The News & Observer.
  16. ^ Hu, Krystal; Mehta, Chavi (2021-07-29). "Analytics behemoth SAS says aiming to go public by 2024". Reuters. Retrieved 2024-04-14.
  17. ^ "SAS to spend $1 billion on AI as global tech race heats up". www.bizjournals.com. Retrieved 2024-10-02.
  18. ^ "About Us". www.jmp.com. Archived from the original on 2022-12-16. Retrieved 2024-05-02.
  19. ^ a b Sall, John (October 5, 2009). "JMP Is 20 Years Old". SAS Blogs.
  20. ^ Sall, John; Creighton, Lee; Lehman, Ann (2007). JMP Start Statistics: A Guide to Statistics and Data Analysis Using JMP. SAS Press. ISBN 978-1599945729.
  21. ^ "People News for January | Amstat News". 2015-01-01. Retrieved 2024-09-26.
  22. ^ "Businessweek profile". Businessweek. Retrieved December 15, 2011.[dead link]
  23. ^ "2017 Distinguished Alumnus Award: John Sall". College of Sciences. Retrieved 2024-09-26.
  24. ^ a b "Forbes profile: John Sall". Forbes. Retrieved 28 June 2020.
  25. ^ Sall, John (15 March 2018). "Presentation at Discovery Summit". JMP.com. Retrieved 21 March 2018.
  26. ^ Monday (May 3, 1962). "John Sall - Tech Philanthropists - Donors - Foundations". Inside Philanthropy. Retrieved May 10, 2016.
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