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Programming Tips

Visualization of L1 distance matrix for items arranged on a 6 x 6 grid

Rick WicklinSeptember 10, 2018 2

Given a rectangular grid with unit spacing, what is the expected distance between two random vertices, where distance is measured in the L1 metric? (Here "random" means "uniformly at random.") I recently needed this answer for some small grids, such as the one to the right, which is a 7 x 6

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Programming Tips $The continued fraction representation of a rational number$

Rick WicklinSeptember 6, 2018 0

The continued fraction representation of a rational number

Continued fractions show up in surprising places. They are used in the numerical approximations of certain functions, including the evaluation of the normal cumulative distribution function (normal CDF) for large values of x (El-bolkiny, 1995, p. 75-77) and in approximating the Lambert W function, which has applications in the modeling

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Programming Tips

Rick WicklinSeptember 4, 2018 3

Store vectors of different lengths in a matrix

In the SAS/IML language, you can only concatenate vectors that have conforming dimensions. For example, to horizontally concatenate two vectors X and Y, the symbols X and Y must have the same number of rows. If not, the statement Z = X || Y will produce an error: ERROR: Matrices

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Programming Tips

Rick WicklinAugust 27, 2018 6

On the assumptions (and misconceptions) of linear regression

A frequent topic on SAS discussion forums is how to check the assumptions of an ordinary least squares linear regression model. Some posts indicate misconceptions about the assumptions of linear regression. In particular, I see incorrect statements such as the following: Help! A histogram of my variables shows that they

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Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Rick WicklinAugust 22, 2018 21

Standardized regression coefficients

A SAS programmer recently asked how to interpret the "standardized regression coefficients" as computed by the STB option on the MODEL statement in PROC REG and other SAS regression procedures. The SAS documentation for the STB option states, "a standardized regression coefficient is computed by dividing a parameter estimate by

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Programming Tips

Rick WicklinAugust 20, 2018 18

Calculators killed the standard statistical table

Video killed the radio star.... We can't rewind, we've gone too far. -- The Buggles (1979) "You kids have it easy," my father used to tell me. "When I was a kid, I didn't have all the conveniences you have today." He's right, and I could say the same

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Data Visualization | Programming Tips

Rick WicklinAugust 8, 2018 0

Plot curves for levels of two categorical variables in SAS

The SGPLOT procedure in SAS makes it easy to create graphs that overlay various groups in the data. Many statements support the GROUP= option, which specifies that the graph should overlay group information. For example, you can create side-by-side bar charts and box plots, and you can overlay multiple scatter

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Analytics | Programming Tips

Rick WicklinAugust 6, 2018 0

How to score and graph a quantile regression model in SAS

This article shows how to score (evaluate) a quantile regression model on new data. SAS supports several procedures for quantile regression, including the QUANTREG, QUANTSELECT, and HPQUANTSELECT procedures. The first two procedures do not support any of the modern methods for scoring regression models, so you must use the "missing

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Analytics | Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Rick WicklinJuly 30, 2018 1

Meaningful names for columns of a design matrix

A programmer recently asked a question on a SAS discussion forum about design matrices for categorical variables. He had generated a design matrix by using PROC GLMMOD and wanted to use the design columns in a subsequent procedure. However, the columns were named COL1, COL2, COL3,..., so he couldn't tell

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Programming Tips

Rick WicklinJuly 25, 2018 0

Color cells in a mosaic plot by deviation from independence

Back in SAS 9.3M2 (SAS/STAT 12.1), PROC FREQ introduced mosaic plots to visualize the joint frequencies in a contingency table. By default, the cells in a mosaic plot are colored according to levels of one of the categorical variables in the analysis. However, in 2013 I showed how you can

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