The DO Loop
Statistical programming in SAS with an emphasis on SAS/IML programs
A colleague and I recently discussed how to generate random permutations without encountering duplicates. Given a set of n items, there are n! permutations My colleague wants to generate k unique permutations at random from among the total of n!. Said differently, he wants to sample without replacement from the
Sometimes it is important to ensure that a matrix has unique rows. When the data are all numeric, there is an easy way to detect (and delete!) duplicate rows in a matrix. The main idea is to subtract one row from another. Start with the first row and subtract it
When we breathe, we breathe in and breathe out. If we choose only one or the other, the results are disastrous. The same principle applies to professional growth and development. Whether we are programmers, statisticians, teachers, students, or writers, we benefit from taking in and giving back. We "take in"
Correlation is a statistic that measures how closely two variables are related to each other. The most popular definition of correlation is the Pearson product-moment correlation, which is a measurement of the linear relationship between two variables. Many textbooks stress the linear nature of the Pearson correlation and emphasize that
As a general rule, when SAS programmers want to manipulate data row by row, they reach for the SAS DATA step. When the computation requires column statistics, the SQL procedure is also useful. When both row and column operations are required, the SAS/IML language is a powerful addition to a
Suppose you want to find observations in multivariate data that are closest to a numerical target value. For example, for the students in the Sashelp.Class data set, you might want to find the students whose (Age, Height, Weight) values are closest to the triplet (13, 62, 100). The way to