Tips and Tricks
In reference to a previous article on Violin Plots, a reader asked about creating comparative mirrored histograms to compare propensity scores. While I had my own understanding of "Mirrored Histograms", I also looked this up on the web. Google showed many cases of two histograms back to back, either horizontally or vertically.
In the first article on Getting Started with GTL, we discussed the basics on how to create a graph using the Graph Template Language. This involved the creation of a "statgraph" template using the TEMPLATE procedure, and then associating data with the template to create the graph using the SGRENDER
I decided this year to get serious about my running. I started recording my distance for every run. I made a SAS data set and generated simple reports. After a few weeks, I set a goal of averaging one marathon a week (3.8 miles per day, 26.2 miles per week,
Working at SAS, I consider myself fortunate to have the best employee benefits in the industry. That is one of the factors placing SAS as one of the best companies to work for worldwide, and often THE best company to work for in USA. Given that, I was curious to know the kind
A couple of weeks back I described q way to create a Schedule Chart using the SGPLOT procedure. In that case, I used the HIGHLOW plot to draw bar segments, both for a single and grouped case. A natural extension is to create one with links between each segment. So,
I am happy to report that my new book "Getting Started with the Graph Template Language in SAS" is now shipping. A colleague suggest it would be useful to post some articles with the same theme of "Getting started". I thought that was a great idea, and decided to start a new
Last week Bruno asked about creating a Schedule Chart using SG Procedures. To me, such projects are very interesting and challenging...How much mileage can we get out of the current set of SGPLOT procedure features to create a visual that was not part of the original requirements? The clear choice for
Yesterday I read a Christina's blog article on the winners of the Best Presentations honor at MWSUG 2013. Two papers caught my (graphical) eye, both by Perry Watts. Perry has done a marvelous job describing how creatively use GTL to make graphs that may not be obvious at first glance.
A couple of weeks back we had a question on how to make a bar chart with stacked and clustered groups. User also wanted to display the value for each stacked segment below the bars. The article Bar Charts with Stacked and Cluster Groups shows how to create such a
Creating bar charts with group classification is very easy using the SG procedures. When using a group variable, the group values for each category are stacked by default. Using the sashelp.prdsale data set and default STAT of SUM, here is the graph and the code. SGPLOT code: proc sgplot data=sashelp.prdsale;
SAS 9.4 was released a month ago, and we are excited about all the new features in SG Procedures, GTL and Designer. I wrote an article on SAS 9.4 graph features last month, and promised more to come. What then could be better than this Tech Talk video hosted by our
As promised, here is a better combined AE-CM graph, using some of the UI improvements suggested by our UI expert, Riley. His suggestions helped to reduce the clutter in the graph, while still keeping all the features preferred by our users. Click on the graphs for a higher resolution image.
At the SAS Global Forum 2013 in San Francisco, I presented a paper on making Patient Profile Graphs using SAS. You can follow the link to see the graphs presented in this paper. In that paper, I presented ways to create AE, CM, VS and Lab graphs. I discussed aligning the
Last week, I presented some highlights of the new features for SG Procedures and GTL in SAS 9.4. Now, let us dig in a bit deeper. For a plot without a GROUP role, setting an attributes was always easy with SG procedures. All you need to do to set bar color
SAS 9.4 releases today with a ton of new features. As eloquently stated by Craig Rubendall, the driving themes are "Enable. Simplify. Innovate". The same sentiment applies to the ODS Graphics, with a ton of new features for the SG Procedures, GTL and ODS Graphics Designer. In the next few articles,
Recently a user chimed in on the SAS Communities page, requesting a way to add some observation level annotation to a box plot. Wendy was delighted to see a graph created by the UNIVARIATE procedure called "Schematic Plot". In this graph, the box plot of the analysis variable is shown with
A Bar Line graph is commonly used in many domains. The SGPLOT procedure makes it easy to create bar line graphs where the user can customize it in many different ways. This post is prompted by a recent question on the communities page on creating such a graph, with one bar and
Often we want to visualize the relationship between variables over time. The understanding of such data can be improved by viewing the animated graph over time. With SAS 9.4, you can create animated graphs using the new animation options on the OPTIONS statement and the PRINTER destination. A popular example an
The SAS Global Forum conference last week was awesome. From the perspective of graphics, there were more papers from uses on graphics and ODS graphics then in recent times. I will post a summary shortly. One of the interesting papers was "#113-2013 - Creating Clark Error Grid using SAS/GRAPH and Annotate..."
The 2013 SAS Global Forum is around the corner in San Francisco and the anticipation is building. Early indications are that attendee registration is up from last year, and we are looking forward to a great conference starting Sunday, April 28. It is great to see the large and diverse offering
In the previous two articles we discussed Discrete Attribute Maps, and how these can be used to ensure that group attributes like color are consistently mapped to group values regardless of their position in the data. Now, let us take a look at the attributes map that allows you to
Last week I wrote about how you can use the Discrete Attributes Map to ensure that group values with specific names are represented in the graph with specific colors or other visual attributes such as marker symbol or line pattern. This attributes map also supports a special keyword "OTHER" which can be used to
A frequent question we get from users is how to create a box plot with custom whiskers lengths. Some want to plot the 10th and 90th percentile, while other want the 5th and 95th percentiles. The VBOX statement in the SGPLOT procedure does not provide for custom whiskers. Also, unlike GTL,
SG procedures and GTL use a collision avoidance algorithm to position data labels for a scatter or series plot. This is enabled by default. The label is preferably placed at the top right corner of the marker. The label is moved to one of the eight locations around the marker to
A common request we have been often hearing is for display of the distribution of data as a box plot, along with some detailed information overlaid. For example, one may have ratings data of all the hospitals in a region by different specialty, and you want to view this distribution
A parametric bar chart in SG Procedure and GTL parlance is a simplified version of the regular bar chart, where the data is assumed to be summarized prior to its usage inside the SG procedures or GTL. So, multiple occurrences of the same category and / or group combination is
Last week I was out to the 2nd Conference on Statistical Practice in New Orleans. It was a great opportunity to meet many users of SAS, R and other software and hear about their projects in applied statistics. I will write up my feedback on this conference soon. In the
The Graph Template Language (GTL) provides you the ability to create complex graphical layouts. We have seen how to create a regular grid of cells based on one or more classification variables using the SGPANEL procedure. Each cell contains the same type of plot. This topic was covered in Dan's article on
Recently a reader chimed in with a question on the Do Loop article by Rick Wicklin on how to create a bar chart with percent statistics. Rick used SAS 9.3 and the reader wanted to do the same with SAS 9.2. For the basic (non-grouped) bar chart, the process is the
In my previous article on Adverse Event Timeline Graph, I wrote about how to create the AE timeline using SAS 9.2 code, using VECTOR plot and the MARKERCHAR option in SCATTER plot. I described a better way to place the labels at the lower end of the vectors. SAS 9.3 provides an easier way
