On Twitter, I saw a tweet from @DataSciFact that read, "The sum of (x_i - x)^2 over a set of data points x_i is minimized when x is the sample mean." I (@RickWicklin) immediately tweeted out a reply: "And the sum of |x_i - x| is minimized by the sample
In categorical data analysis, it is common to analyze tables of counts. For example, a researcher might gather data for 18 boys and 12 girls who apply for a summer enrichment program. The researcher might be interested in whether the proportion of boys that are admitted is different from the
In The Essential Guide to Bootstrapping in SAS, I note that there are many SAS procedures that support bootstrap estimates without requiring the analyst to write a program. I have previously written about using bootstrap options in the TTEST procedure. This article discusses the NLIN procedure, which can fit nonlinear
When you have many correlated variables, principal component analysis (PCA) is a classical technique to reduce the dimensionality of the problem. The PCA finds a smaller dimensional linear subspace that explains most of the variability in the data. There are many statistical tools that help you decide how many principal
Recently, I showed how to use a heat map to visualize measurements over time for a set of patients in a longitudinal study. The visualization is sometimes called a lasagna plot because it presents an alternative to the usual spaghetti plot. A reader asked whether a similar visualization can be
What is McNemar's test? How do you run the McNemar test in SAS? Why might other statistical software report a value for McNemar's test that is different from the SAS value? SAS supports an exact version of the McNemar test, but when should you use it? This article answers these
Longitudinal data are measurements for a set of subjects at multiple points in time. Also called "panel data" or "repeated measures data," this kind of data is common in clinical trials in which patients are tracked over time. Recently, a SAS programmer asked how to visualize missing values in a
This article implements Passing-Bablok regression in SAS. Passing-Bablok regression is a one-variable regression technique that is used to compare measurements from different instruments or medical devices. The measurements of the two variables (X and Y) are both measured with errors. Consequently, you cannot use ordinary linear regression, which assumes that
Sometimes it is useful to know the extreme values in data. You might need to know the Top 5 or the Top 10 smallest data values. Or, the Top 5 or Top 10 largest data values. There are many ways to do this in SAS, but this article shows examples
How can you estimate percentiles in SAS Viya? This article shows how to call the percentile action from PROC CAS to estimate percentiles of variables in a CAS data table. Percentiles and quantiles are essentially the same (the pth quantile is the 100*pth percentile for p in [0, 1]), so
