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Rick WicklinFebruary 4, 2013 1

Simulate discrete variables by using the "Table" distribution

I wanted to write a blog post about the "Table distribution" in SAS. The Table distribution, which is supported by the RAND and the RANDGEN function, enables you to specify the probability of selecting each of k items. Therefore you can use the Table distribution to sample, with replacement, from

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Rick WicklinJanuary 30, 2013 0

Oh, those pesky temporary variables!

The SAS/IML language secretly creates temporary variables. Most of the time programmers aren't even aware that the language does this. However, there is one situation where if you don't think carefully about temporary variables, your program will silently produce an error. And as every programmer knows, silent wrong numbers are

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Rick WicklinJanuary 23, 2013 1

Breaking bad programming habits. What's yours?

I like to be efficient in my SAS/IML programs, but sometimes I get into bad habits. Recently I realized that I was reshaping a bunch of SAS/IML row vectors because I wanted to write them to a SAS data set. This is completely unnecessary! The SAS/IML language will create a

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Rick WicklinJanuary 21, 2013 6

Reading big data in the SAS/IML language

A SAS/IML user on a discussion forum was trying to read data into a SAS/IML matrix, but the data was so large that it would not fit into memory. (Recall that SAS/IML matrices are kept in RAM.) After a few questions, it turned out that the user was trying to

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Rick WicklinJanuary 7, 2013 2

Getting started with the SAS/IML language: A free hands-on workshop

I am pleased to announce that this year at SAS Global Forum 2013 (San Francisco, April 27 to May 1, 2013) I am giving a free hands-on workshop (HOW) entitled "Getting Started with the SAS/IML Language." If you are not familiar with the very popular Hands-On Workshop series at SAS

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Advanced Analytics | Learn SAS

Rick WicklinJanuary 3, 2013 1

12 Tips for SAS Statistical Programmers

It's the start of a new year. Have you made a resolution to be a better data analyst? A better SAS statistical programmer? To learn more about multivariate statistics? What better way to start the New Year than to read (or re-read!) the top 12 articles for statistical programmers from

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Rick WicklinNovember 19, 2012 2

Beware the naked LOC

The LOC function is one of the most important functions in the SAS/IML language. The LOC function finds elements of a vector or matrix that satisfy some condition. For example, if you are going to apply a logarithmic transform to data, you can use the LOC function to find all

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Rick WicklinMarch 5, 2012 11

Functions to know: The MEAN, VAR, and STD functions

As a SAS developer, I am always looking ahead to the next release of SAS. However, many SAS customer sites migrate to new releases slowly and are just now adopting versions of SAS that were released in 2010 or 2011. Consequently, I want to write a few articles that discuss

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Rick WicklinSeptember 30, 2010 1

Twitter and the Fibonacci Sequence

This morning I read an interesting post about the design of the new Twitter Web page. The post included some R code to generate the ratio between adjacent terms in the Fibonacci seqence. The ratio converges to the "Golden Ratio": 1.61803399.... I'm sure that many R gurus will post simpler

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