Occasionally on a discussion forum, a statistical programmer will ask a question like the following: I am trying to fit a parametric distribution to my data. The sample has a long tail, so I have tried the lognormal, Weibull, and gamma distributions, but nothing seems to fit. Please help!! In
Every year near Halloween I write an article in which I demonstrate a simple programming trick that is a real treat to use. This year's trick (which features the CMISS function and the crossproducts matrix in SAS/IML) enables you to count the number of observations that are missing for pairs
A previous post discusses how the loess regression algorithm is implemented in SAS. The LOESS procedure in SAS/STAT software provides the data analyst with options to control the loess algorithm and fit nonparametric smoothing curves through points in a scatter plot. Although PROC LOESS satisfies 99.99% of SAS users who
Loess regression is a nonparametric technique that uses local weighted regression to fit a smooth curve through points in a scatter plot. Loess curves are can reveal trends and cycles in data that might be difficult to model with a parametric curve. Loess regression is one of several algorithms in
How far away is the nearest hospital? How far is the nearest restaurant? The nearest gas station? These are commonly asked questions whose answers depend on the location of the person asking the question. Recently I showed an algorithm that enables you to find the distance between a set of
What is weighted regression? How does it differ from ordinary (unweighted) regression? This article describes how to compute and score weighted regression models. Visualize a weighted regression Technically, an "unweighted" regression should be called an "equally weighted " regression since each ordinary least squares (OLS) regression weights each observation equally.
The recent releases of SAS 9.4 have featured major enhancements to the ODS statistical graphics procedures such as PROC SGPLOT. In fact, PROC SGPLOT (and the underlying Graph Template Language (GTL)) are so versatile and powerful that you might forget to consider whether you can create a graph automatically by
Last week I showed how to find the nearest neighbors for a set of d-dimensional points. A SAS user wrote to ask whether something similar could be done when you have two distinct groups of points and you want to find the elements in the second group that are closest
My son is taking an AP Statistics course in high school this year. AP Statistics is one of the fastest-growing AP courses, so I welcome the chance to see topics and techniques in the course. Last week I was pleased to see that they teach data exploration techniques, such as
Last week I showed how to compute nearest-neighbor distances for a set of numerical observations. Nearest-neighbor distances are used in many statistical computations, including the analysis of spatial point patterns. This article describes how the distribution of nearest-neighbor distances can help you determine whether spatial data are uniformly distributed or
