Missing data can be informative. Sometimes missing values in one variable are related to missing values in another variable. Other times missing values in one variable are independent of missing values in other variables. As part of the exploratory phase of data analysis, you should investigate whether there are patterns
In SAS procedures, the WHERE clause is a useful way to filter observations so that the procedure receives only a subset of the data to analyze. The IML procedure supports the WHERE clause in two separate statements. On the USE statement, the WHERE clause acts as a global filter. The
Descriptive univariate statistics are the foundation of data analysis. Before you create a statistical model for new data, you should examine descriptive univariate statistics such as the mean, standard deviation, quantiles, and the number of nonmissing observations. In SAS, there is an easy way to create a data set that
Last weekend was the 2016 NCAA Division I wrestling tournament. In collegiate wrestling there are ten weight classes. The top eight wrestlers in each weight class are awarded the title "All-American" to acknowledge that they are the best wrestlers in the country. I saw a blog post on the InterMat
My previous blog post shows how to use PROC LOGISTIC and spline effects to predict the probability that an NBA player scores from various locations on a court. The LOGISTIC procedure fits parametric models, which means that the procedure estimates parameters for every explanatory effect in the model. Spline bases
Last week Robert Allison showed how to download NBA data into SAS and create graphs such as the location where Stephen Curry took shots in the 2015-16 season to date. The graph at left shows the kind of graphs that Robert created. I've reversed the colors from Robert's version, so
Most SAS regression procedures support the "stars and bars" operators, which enable you to create models that include main effects and all higher-order interaction effects. You can also easily create models that include all n-way interactions up to a specified value of n. However, it can be a challenge to
Last week I showed how to create dummy variables in SAS by using the GLMMOD procedure. The procedure enables you to create design matrices that encode continuous variables, categorical variables, and their interactions. You can use dummy variables to replace categorical variables in procedures that do not support a CLASS
SAS programmers sometimes ask, "How do I create a design matrix in SAS?" A design matrix is a numerical matrix that represents the explanatory variables in regression models. In simple models, the design matrix contains one column for each continuous variable and multiple columns (called dummy variables) for each classification
Last week I showed how to use PROC EXPAND to compute moving averages and other rolling statistics in SAS. Unfortunately, PROC EXPAND is part of SAS/ETS software and not every SAS site has a license for SAS/ETS. For simple moving averages, you can write a DATA step program, as discussed
