When we first released GTL and SG Procedures back with SAS 9.2, Box Plots and Bar Charts would always treat the category axis as discrete. We realized soon enough that we need to support box plots on scaled interval axes for many clinical applications, and this was added in SAS
There are many ways to modify the graphs that SAS creates. Standard graph customization methods include template modification (which most people use to modify graphs that analytical procedures produce) and SG annotation (which most people use to modify graphs that procedures such as PROC SGPLOT produce). However, you can also
We all want to customize our graphs just so, and have our personal preferences. Over the past few releases SG Procedures and GTL have added options to customize the look and feel of our graphs. In this article, I will describe new ways in which you can customize your legends. We will also see some
Last week's post about odds ratio plots in SAS made me think about a similar plot that visualizes the parameter estimates for a regression analysis. The so-called regression coefficient plot is a scatter plot of the estimates for each effect in the model, with lines that indicate the width of
SAS 9.4 Maintenance release 3 was released on July 14. The ODS Graphics procedures include many important, useful and cool features in this release, some that have been requested by you for a while. In the next few articles, I will cover some of these features. Last time I covered
I recently read an argument by Andrew Wheeler for using a logarithmic axis for plotting odds ratios. I found his argument convincing. Accordingly, this blog post shows how to create an odds ratio plot in SAS where the ratio axis is displayed on a log scale. Thanks to Bob Derr
My colleague Robert Allison finds the most interesting data sets to visualize! Yesterday he posted a visualization of toothless seniors in the US. More precisely, he created graphs that show the estimated prevalence of adults (65 years or older) who have had all their natural teeth extracted. The dental profession
A SAS programmer wanted to plot the normal distribution and highlight the area under curve that corresponds to the tails of the distribution. For example, the following plot shows the lower decile shaded in blue and the upper decile shaded in red. An easy way to do this in SAS
Big data is a popular topic, with multiple articles about the analysis of the same. Today, "Big Data" is measured in multiple of Tera Bytes, and SAS provides special software for analysis and visualization of Big Data - Visual Analytics. When data is very big, it may be meaningless, let alone inefficient, to plot
You've probably heard of a random walk, but have you heard about the drunkard's walk? I've previously written about how to simulate a one-dimensional random walk in SAS. In the random walk, you imagine a person who takes a series of steps where the step size and direction is a
SAS/IML software is used by many SAS programmers, primarily for creating custom algorithms and macros that implement statistical analyses that are not built into any SAS procedure. I know that PROC IML is used regularly by pharmaceutical companies, by the financial and insurance industries, and by researchers in medical colleges
When ODS Graphics was first released with SAS 9.2 in 2008, a conscious effort was made to create graphs that were consistent and aesthetically pleasing out of the box. Features in the graph derive their visual attributes from the active Style. When Group classifications are in effect, the different classification
Bubble Plots provide additional ways to visualize your data. The plot supports display of multiple response characteristics of the data in one graph. Bubble plots were introduced with SAS 9.3 in GTL and SG Procedures. A bubble is drawn at each (x, y) point in the graph, and each bubble is
In my article about finding an initial guess for root-finding algorithms, I stated that Newton's root-finding method "might not converge or might converge to a root that is far away from the root that you wanted to find." A reader wanted more information about that statement. I have previously shown
The SGPLOT procedures includes features to add annotations to your graph in many different ways. Annotations provide you a flexible way to add features to your graph that are not available through the standard plot statements. Recently, I saw this graph on the web that caught my attention. Clearly, this looks like
I still remember the first time I was asked to "consult" on a statistical problem. A former physics professor had some students who had gathered data that should lie along an arc of a theoretical circle. The professor asked if there was a regression technique that could find the center
I was reading a statistics book when I encountered a histogram that caught my eye. The histogram looked similar to the one at the left. It contained a normal density estimate overlaid on a histogram, but the height of the density curve seemed too short when compared to the heights
If you have programmed with SAS in the last 15 years, you have probably had a reason to share your SAS results in PDF format. The ODS PDF destination, much like a well-designed car, has evolved over the years, offering progressively nicer features like security, enhanced image formatting and embedded
When I was an undergraduate physic major, my favorite professor would start each class with a joke or pun. One day he began class with a paraphrase of a famous quote from the movie Star Trek 4: The Voyage Home (the one with the whales). "Today," my professor said, imitating
North Carolina is a state that requires yearly inspections of motor vehicles. An inspection checks for safety features (lights, brakes, tires,....) as well as checking vehicle emissions to ensure that vehicles meet air pollution standards. I recently had a car inspected and noticed a pie chart on the inspection's summary
SGF 2015 was a blast with a focus on Visual Analytics, SAS Studio, Hadoop and more. Graphs were everywhere, and it was a banner year for ODS Graphics with over 15 papers and presentations by users on creating graphs using SG Procedures, GTL and Designer. Dan Heath, Prashant Hebbar, Scott
Did you know that if you have set multiple titles in SAS, that there is an easy way to remove them? For example, suppose that you've written the following statements, which call the TITLE statement to set three titles: title "A Great Big Papa Title"; title2 "A Medium-sized Mama Title";
Sometimes different communities use the same name for different objects. To a soldier, "boots" are rugged, heavy, high-top foot coverings. To a soccer (football) player, "boots" are lightweight cleats. So it is with the term "waterfall plot." To researchers in the medical field, a "waterfall plot" is a sorted bar
A very common type of graph contains two series plot, where the user is expected to evaluate the difference visually. I saw one such plot on the web today shown on the right. This graph has two curves, one for malpractice premiums and one for claims, with a shaded band
In clinical trials, a waterfall plot is often used to indicate how patients in the study responded to treatment. In oncology trials, the response variable might be the percent change in the size of a tumor from the individual's baseline value at the start of the trial. The percent change
MicroMaps are a powerful way to display data where the display includes small, lightweight maps to provide geographical information regarding the data. This geographical information gives clues to the relationship between the data that could lead to more insight. The SAS SG Procedures and GTL do not currently have built-in
Last week I was chatting with some mathematicians and I mentioned the blog post that I wrote last year on the distribution of Pythagorean triples. In my previous article, I showed that there is an algorithm that uses matrix multiplication to generate every primitive Pythagorean triple by starting with the
Back in late 2012 I discussed a technique for Conditional Highlighting, where additional attributes can be displayed in a graph. In the previous article the goal was to display a graph of Response by Year by Drug. We used a cluster grouped bar chart to create the bar chart. We
In the traveling salesman problem (TSP), a salesman must minimize travel distance while visiting each of a given set of cities exactly once. Recently, the TSP has generated some buzz in the popular media, after a blog post by Randy Olson. The tour shown was not quite optimal, and Bill
Sankey Diagrams have found increasing favor for visualization of data. This visualization tool has been around for a long time, traditionally used to visualize the flow of energy, or materials. . Now to be sure, GTL does have a statement design for a Sankey Diagram which was implemented only in Flex for use
