When programmers begin learning a new computer language, the first program they write is often one that prints the text “Hello, World!” Successfully writing a Hello World program assures the programmer that the software is successfully installed and that all necessary features are working: parsers, compilers, linkers, and so on. In fact, long before viral videos ruled the internet, many of us circulated a viral email that describes the evolution of a programmer in terms of Hello World programs.

This is my Hello World blog post.

In this blog I intend to discuss, describe, and disseminate ideas related to statistical programming with the SAS/IML language. (The acronym IML stands for “interactive matrix language.”) You can run the SAS/IML language in PROC IML and in SAS/IML Studio.

I will present tips and techniques for writing efficient SAS/IML programs for data analysis, modeling, simulation, sampling, matrix computations, regression, and data visualization.

Like the New York Times crossword puzzle editor, I will try to make the posts appeal to a wide range of SAS programmers by increasing the difficulty through the week.

• Mondays will feature introductory ideas and tips for beginners.
• Wednesday posts will discuss intermediate techniques and statistical ideas such as modeling and simulation.
• On Fridays, I’ll address topics for experienced SAS/IML programmers and data analysts, such as data visualization techniques that are implemented in SAS/IML Studio.

On most days, I’ll post programs. This is a blog for programmers, by a programmer, so that programming shall not perish from the earth.

Oh yeah, one more thing:

proc iml;
msg = {"Hello", "World!"};
print msg;