The moment-ratio diagram is a tool that is useful when choosing a distribution that models a sample of univariate data. As I show in my book (Simulating Data with SAS, Wicklin, 2013), you first plot the skewness and kurtosis of the sample on the moment-ratio diagram to see what common
Tag: Data Analysis
A dot plot is a standard statistical graphic that displays a statistic (often a mean) and the uncertainty of the statistic for one or more groups. Statisticians and data scientists use it in the analysis of group data. In late 2023, I started noticing headlines about "dot plots" in the
A statistical analyst used the GENMOD procedure in SAS to fit a linear regression model. He noticed that the table of parameter estimates has an extra row (labeled "Scale") that is not a regression coefficient. The "scale parameter" is not part of the parameter estimates table produced by PROC REG
With four parameters I can fit an elephant. With five I can make his trunk wiggle. — John von Neumann Ever since the dawn of statistics, researchers have searched for the Holy Grail of statistical modeling. Namely, a flexible distribution that can model any continuous univariate data. As the quote
In statistical quality control, practitioners often estimate the variability of products that are being produced in a manufacturing plant. It is important to estimate the variability as soon as possible, which means trying to obtain an estimate from a small sample. Samples of size five or less are not uncommon
This article looks at a geometric method for estimating the center of a multivariate point cloud. The method is known as convex-hull peeling. In two-dimensions, you can perform convex-hull peeling in SAS 9 by using the CVEXHULL function in SAS IML software. For higher dimensions, you can use the CONVEXHULL
In a previous article, I presented some of the most popular blog posts from 2023. The popular articles tend to discuss elementary topics that have broad appeal. However, I also wrote many technical articles about advanced topics. The following articles didn't make the Top 10 list, but they deserve a
An unobserved category is one that does not appear in a sample of data. For example, in a small sample of US voters, you are likely to observe members of the major political parties, but less likely to observe members of minor or fringe parties. This can cause a headache
In 2023, I wrote 90 articles for The DO Loop blog. My most popular articles were about SAS programming, data visualization, and statistics. In addition, several "general interest" articles were popular, including my article for Pi Day and an article about AI chatbots. If you missed any of these articles,
Statistical software often includes supports for a weight variable. Many SAS procedures make a distinction between integer frequencies and more general "importance weights." Frequencies are supported by using the FREQ statement in SAS procedures; general weights are supported by using the WEIGHT statement. An exception is PROC FREQ, which contains
SAS provides many built-in routines for data analysis. A previous article discusses polychoric correlation, which is a measure of association between two ordinal variables. In SAS, you can use PROC FREQ or PROC CORR to estimate the polychoric correlation, its standard error, and confidence intervals. Although SAS provides a built-in
Correlation is a statistic that measures the association between two variables. When two variables are positively correlated, low values of one variable tend to be associated with low values of the other variable. Medium values and high values are similarly associated. For negative correlation, the association is flipped: low values
A previous article shows ways to perform efficient BY-group processing in the SAS IML language. BY-group processing is a SAS-ism for what other languages call group processing or subgroup processing. The main idea is that the data set contains several discrete variables such as sex, race, education level, and so
One thing I have learned about rank-based statistics over the years is "Be careful of tied values!" On multiple occasions, I have been asked, "Why doesn't the SAS result for [NAME] statistic agree with my hand calculation?" The answer is sometimes because of the way that tied values are handled.
Many SAS procedures support a BY statement that enables you to perform an analysis for each unique value of a BY-group variable. The SAS IML language does not support a BY statement, but you can program a loop that iterates over all BY groups. You can emulate BY-group processing by
There are many ways to model a set of raw data by using a continuous probability distribution. It can be challenging, however, to choose the distribution that best models the data. Are the data normal? Lognormal? Is there a theoretical reason to prefer one distribution over another? The SAS has
Does anyone write paper checks anymore? According to researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta (Greene, et al., 2020), the use of paper checks has declined 63% among US consumers since the year 2000. The researchers surveyed more than 3,000 consumers in 2017-2018 and discovered that only 7% of
In a previous article, I discussed the Wilcoxon signed rank test, which is a nonparametric test for the location of the median. The Wikipedia article about the signed rank test mentions a variation of the test due to Pratt (1959). Whereas the standard Wilcoxon test excludes values that equal μ0
Wilcoxon's signed rank test is a popular nonparametric alternative to a paired t test. In a paired t test, you analyze measurements for subjects before and after some treatment or intervention. You analyze the difference in the measurements for each subject, and test whether the mean difference is significantly different
A previous article discusses standardized coefficients in linear regression models and shows how to compute standardized regression coefficients in SAS by using the STB option on the MODEL statement in PROC REG. It also discusses how to interpret a standardized regression coefficient. Recently, a SAS user wanted to know how
A previous article explains the Spearman rank correlation, which is a robust cousin to the more familiar Pearson correlation. I've also discussed why you might want to use rank correlation, and how to interpret the strength of a rank correlation. This article gives a short example that helps you to
SAS supports many ways to compute the rank of a numeric variable and to handle tied values. However, sometimes I need to rank the values in a character categorical variable. For example, the values {"Male", "Female", "Male"} have ranks {2, 1, 2} because, in alphabetical order, "Female" is the first-ranked
A previous article defines the silhouette statistic (Rousseeuw, 1987) and shows how to use it to identify observations in a cluster analysis that are potentially misclassified. The article provides many graphs, including the silhouette plot, which is a bar chart or histogram that displays the distribution of the silhouette statistic
Assigning observations into clusters can be challenging. One challenge is deciding how many clusters are in the data. Another is identifying which observations are potentially misclassified because they are on the boundary between two different clusters. Ralph Abbey's 2019 paper ("How to Evaluate Different Clustering Results") is a good way
The "Teacher’s Corner" of The American Statistician enables statisticians to discuss topics that are relevant to teaching and learning statistics. Sometimes, the articles have practical relevance, too. Andersson (2023) "The Wald Confidence Interval for a Binomial p as an Illuminating 'Bad' Example," is intended for professors and masters-level students in
A journal article listed the mean, median, and size for subgroups of the data, but did not report the overall mean or median. A SAS programmer wondered what, if any, inferences could be made about the overall mean and median for the data. The answer is that you can calculate
A SAS user asked how to interpret a rank-based correlation such as a Spearman correlation or a Kendall correlation. These are alternative measures to the usual Pearson product-moment correlation, which is widely used. The programmer knew that words like "weak," "moderate," and "strong" are sometimes used to describe the Pearson
A previous article discusses rank correlation and lists some advantages of using rank correlation. However, the article does not show examples where an analyst might prefer to report the rank correlation instead of the traditional Pearson product-moment correlation. This article provides three examples where the rank correlation is a better
A previous article discusses the issue of a confounding variable and uses correlation to give an example. The example shows that the correlation between two variables might be affected by a third variable, which is called a confounding variable. The article mentions that you can use the PARTIAL statement in
A data analyst wanted to estimate the correlation between two variables, but he was concerned about the influence of a confounding variable that is correlated with them. The correlation might affect the apparent relationship between main two variables in the study. A common confounding variable is age because young people