The SAS Dummy
A SAS® blog for the rest of us
Although the NSA and news media have given metadata a bad name in the popular press, the fact remains that information about the nature of your data is extremely valuable. For example, I posted an article yesterday about data cardinality. Cardinality measures the uniqueness of values in a variable. Cardinality
Data cardinality is an important topic for for data analysis. In mathematical terms, cardinality is simply the number of elements in a set. But in data applications, cardinality signifies the number of unique values for a given field of data. Related terms include number of levels (thank you, PROC FREQ
Traditionally, SAS users like their processes to behave like Ron Popeil's famous rotisserie: they want to set it and forget it. That's the definition of a batch process. You work like heck to get it ready to run, then you push the button (or schedule it) and walk away. But