The DO Loop
Statistical programming in SAS with an emphasis on SAS/IML programs
A previous article describes the funnel plot (Spiegelhalter, 2005), which can identify samples that have rates or proportions that are much different than expected. The funnel plot is a scatter plot that plots the sample proportion of some quantity against the size of the sample. The variance of the sample
Death is always a difficult topic to discuss, and death has been in the news a lot during this tragic coronavirus pandemic. Many news stories focus on states, counties, or cities that have the most cases or the most deaths. A related statistic is the case fatality rate, which is
I previously wrote about the advantages of adding horizontal and vertical reference lines to a graph. You can also add a diagonal reference line to a graph. The SGPLOT procedure in SAS supports two primary ways to add a diagonal reference line: The LINEPARM statement enables you to specify a
Data tell a story. A purpose of data visualization is to convey that story to the reader in a clear and impactful way. Sometimes you can let the data "speak for themselves" in an unadorned graphic, but sometimes it is helpful to add reference lines to a graph to emphasize
Every day we face risks. If we drive to work, we risk a fatal auto accident. If we eat red meat and fatty foods, we risk a heart attack. If we go out in public during a pandemic, we risk contracting a disease. A logical response to risk is to
I have written several articles about how to work with continuous probability distributions in SAS. I always emphasize that it is important to be able to compute the four essential functions for working with a statistical distribution. Namely, you need to know how to generate random values, how to compute