The DO Loop

Programming Tips

Strengthen your programming skills with tips and techniques from the experts

Rick WicklinJanuary 9, 2017 14

ODS OUTPUT: Store any statistic created by any SAS procedure

In the beginning, SAS created procedures and output. The output was formless and void. Then SAS said, "Let there be ODS," and there was ODS. Customers saw that ODS was good, and SAS separated the computation from the display and management of output. The preceding paragraph oversimplifies the SAS Output

English

Programming Tips

Rick WicklinJanuary 4, 2017 2

The top 10 posts from The DO Loop in 2016

I wrote 105 posts for The DO Loop blog in 2016. My most popular articles were about data analysis, SAS programming tips, and elementary statistics. Without further ado, here are the most popular articles from 2016. Data Analysis and Visualization Start with a juicy set of data and an interesting

English

Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Rick WicklinOctober 5, 2015 39

How to generate random integers in SAS

You can use SAS to generate random integers between 1–10 or in the range 1–100. This article shows how to generate random integers as easily as Excel does. I was recently talking with some SAS customers and I was asked "Why can't SAS create an easy way to generate random

English

Advanced Analytics | Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Compute minimum and maximum of rows and columns in SAS

Rick WicklinDecember 1, 2014 16

Compute maximum and minimum values for rows and columns in SAS

A common question on SAS discussion forums is how to compute the minimum and maximum values across several variables. It is easy to compute statistics across rows by using the DATA step. This article shows how to compute the minimum and maximum values for each observation (across variables) and, for

English

Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Rick WicklinNovember 3, 2014 0

Recent additions to the SAS/IML file-sharing community

It has been three months since the introduction of the SAS/IML File Exchange, so I thought I'd give a short update on recent submissions and activity. (Note: The File Exchange was merged into the SAS Community Library in 2022.) Users have submitted eight new articles. The application areas include experimental

English

Advanced Analytics | Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Rick WicklinJuly 16, 2014 4

How to share SAS/IML programs with the world

Have you written a SAS/IML program that you think is particularly clever? Are you the proud author of SAS/IML functions that extend the functionality of SAS software? You've worked hard to develop, debug, and test your program, so why not share it with others? There is now a location for

English

Programming Tips

Output percentiles in a tabular format in SAS

Rick WicklinOctober 23, 2013 14

Output percentiles of multiple variables in a tabular format

A challenge for statistical programmers is getting data into the right form for analysis. For graphing or analyzing data, sometimes the "wide format" (each subject is represented by one row and many variables) is required, but other times the "long format" (observations for each subject span multiple rows) is more

English

Programming Tips

Rick WicklinJuly 10, 2013 10

Six reasons you should stop using the RANUNI function to generate random numbers

Are you still using the old RANUNI, RANNOR, RANBIN, and other "RANXXX" functions to generate random numbers in SAS? If so, here are six reasons why you should switch from these older (1970s) algorithms to the newer (late 1990s) Mersenne-Twister algorithm, which is implemented in the RAND function. The newer

English

Programming Tips

Rick WicklinJune 6, 2012 3

Eight tips to make your simulation run faster

"Help! My simulation is taking too long to run! How can I make it go faster?" I frequently talk with statistical programmers who claim that their "simulations are too slow" (by which they mean, "they take too long"). They suspect that their program is inefficient, but they aren't sure why.

English

Programming Tips

Rick WicklinFebruary 22, 2012 20

How to compute Mahalanobis distance in SAS

I recently blogged about Mahalanobis distance and what it means geometrically. I also previously showed how Mahalanobis distance can be used to compute outliers in multivariate data. But how do you compute Mahalanobis distance in SAS? Computing Mahalanobis distance with built-in SAS procedures and functions There are several ways to

English

Blogs

Blogs

Programming Tips