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Data Visualization | Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Rick WicklinOctober 31, 2018 5

A useful feature in PROC SGPLOT is the ability to easily visualize subgroups of data. Most statements in the SGPLOT procedure support a GROUP= option that enables you to overlay plots of subgroups. When you use the GROUP= option, observations are assigned attributes (colors, line patterns, symbols, ...) that indicate

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Programming Tips

Rick WicklinOctober 29, 2018 1

Bootstrap regression estimates: Residual resampling

If you want to bootstrap the parameters in a statistical regression model, you have two primary choices. The first, case resampling, is discussed in a previous article. This article describes the second choice, which is resampling residuals (also called model-based resampling). This article shows how to implement residual resampling in

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Analytics | Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Rick WicklinOctober 24, 2018 0

Bootstrap regression estimates: Case resampling

If you want to bootstrap the parameters in a statistical regression model, you have two primary choices. The first is case resampling, which is also called resampling observations or resampling pairs. In case resampling, you create the bootstrap sample by randomly selecting observations (with replacement) from the original data. The

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Programming Tips

Rick WicklinOctober 22, 2018 0

Transpose blocks to reshape data

A SAS programmer asked how to rearrange elements of a matrix. The rearrangement he wanted was rather complicated: certain blocks of data needed to move relative to other blocks, but the values within each block were to remain unchanged. It turned out that the mathematical operation he needed is called

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Programming Tips

Rick WicklinOctober 8, 2018 0

The intersection of multiple sets

This article compares several ways to find the elements that are common to multiple sets. I test which method is the fastest in the SAS/IML language. However, all algorithms are intrinsically fast, which raises an important question: when is it worth the time and effort to optimize an algorithm? The

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Analytics | Programming Tips

Rick WicklinOctober 3, 2018 7

Fast simulation of multivariate normal data with an AR(1) correlation structure

It is sometimes necessary for researchers to simulate data with thousands of variables. It is easy to simulate thousands of uncorrelated variables, but more difficult to simulate thousands of correlated variables. For that, you can generate a correlation matrix that has special properties, such as a Toeplitz matrix or a

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Programming Tips

Rick WicklinOctober 1, 2018 1

Chi-square tests for proportions in one-way tables

Programmers on a SAS discussion forum recently asked about the chi-square test for proportions as implemented in PROC FREQ in SAS. One person asked the basic question, "how do I test the null hypothesis that the observed proportions are equal to a set of known proportions?" Another person said that

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Programming Tips

Rick WicklinSeptember 26, 2018 2

Radial basis functions and Gaussian kernels in SAS

A radial basis function is a scalar function that depends on the distance to some point, called the center point, c. One popular radial basis function is the Gaussian kernel φ(x; c) = exp(-||x – c||2 / (2 σ2)), which uses the squared distance from a vector x to the

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Programming Tips

Rick WicklinSeptember 24, 2018 8

How many perfect riffle shuffles are required to restore a deck to its initial order?

Last week I compared the overhand shuffle to the riffle shuffle. I used random operations to simulate both kinds of shuffles and then compared how well they mix cards. The article caused one my colleague and fellow blogger, Rob Pratt, to ask if I was familiar with a bit of

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Programming Tips

Rick WicklinSeptember 17, 2018 0

Linearly spaced vectors in SAS

The SAS/IML language and the MATLAB language are similar. Both provide a natural syntax for performing high-level computations on vectors and matrices, including basic linear algebra subroutines. Sometimes a SAS programmer will convert an algorithm from MATLAB into SAS/IML. Because the languages are not identical, I am sometimes asked, "what

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