One of my presentations at SAS Global Forum 2014 was about the new heat map functions in SAS/IML 13.1. Over the summer I created a short video of my presentation, which gives an overview of visualizing matrices with heat maps, and describes how to choose colors for heat maps:

If your browser does not support embedded video, you can go directly to the video on YouTube.

If you prefer to read articles about heat maps so that you can study the concepts and cut and paste examples, here are a few recent blog posts that are based on my SAS Global Forum presentation:

• Create a heat map with a continuous color ramp.
• Create a heat map with a discrete color ramp for a matrix that contains a small number of unique values.
• Choose color ramps that are based on sound design principles, such as those at the ColorBrewer.org web site.

For a fun application of discrete heat maps, see my article about implementing a one-dimensional cellular automata in SAS.