When I need to graph a function of two variables, I often choose to use a contour plot. A surface plot is probably easier for many people to understand, but it has several disadvantages when compared to a contour plot. For example, the following statements in SAS/IML Studio displays a
ODS Graphics components like GTL and SG procedures are designed to work with Styles to create graphs that are effective in the delivery of information and aesthetically pleasing out of the box. You no longer have to tweak the colors to ensure a nice graph. The graph derives all the
In the previous post on Broken Y-Axis, I reviewed different ways to display data as a Bar Chart, where the response values for some categories are many orders of magnitude larger than the other values. These tall bars force the display of other values to be squeezed down thus making it harder to compare
Often we want to display data as a bar chart where a few observations have large values compared to the rest. Comparison between the smaller values becomes hard as the small bars are squeezed by the tall bars. Here is an example data, and a bar chart showing the data. The large values
This post is a result of an intriguing question posed by a user on the SAS communities' page. How to create a bar chart where the category is a combination of two variables var_1 and var_2 (each with values of '+' and '-'), and get a X axis that shows each
PharmaSUG 2012 conference drew to a close today, concluding two and a half days packed with papers, presentations, posters, hands-on demos and super demos by SAS staff. While the weather outside was a bit chilly from time to time, the conference what hopping with many user papers on how to
Recently, an interesting question was posed on the previous article on this blog by a reader. Can we use the new DiscreteAttrMap feature to create just a legend with specific entries, with no graph. The question was intriguing enough that I did not wait to ask - "Why?". I just got
A recent article in the SAS and R blog was about current winter temperatures in Albany, NY. The temperature data for the recent winter (Dec 2011 - Mar 2012) was plotted on a polar graph. Robert Allison posted an article on displaying the same data as a Polar Graph using SAS/GRAPH . Here is his
ODS Graphics system was initially motivated by the need for high quality graphs for SAS Base, STAT, and other analytical procedures. Use of SG Procedures, ODS Graphics Designer and GTL by users too has initially focused on analytical graphs. But just like wheels on carryon bags that started for the specific needs of flight
Bubble plots are often used to display social and economic data as Gapminder effectively does. With the addition of the BUBBLEPLOT statement to SAS 9.3, it is now possible to create bubble plots in SAS with a few lines of code: proc template; define statgraph bplot; begingraph; entrytitle 'Bubble Plot
The graph showing the distribution of the maximum liver function test values by treatment for all participants in a study is commonly used for the analysis of safety data in clinical trials. The data is often structured in multiple columns (one per treatment) as below on the left, or grouped by
The parable of beer and diapers is often related when teaching data mining techniques. Whether fact or fiction, a Heat Map is useful to view the claimed associations. A co-worker recently enquired about possible ways to display associations or dependency between variables. One option is to show the dependency as a node
Often it is useful to view multiple responses by a common independent variable all in the same plot. SGPLOT procedure and GTL support the ability to view two responses, one each on the Y and Y2 axes by one independent variable (X) in one graph. Yes, you can also have X
A recent question on a SAS Discussion Forum was "how can you overlay multiple kernel density estimates on a single plot?" There are three ways to do this, depending on your goals and objectives. Overlay different estimates of the same variable Sometimes you have a single variable and want to
Some SAS products such as SAS/IML Studio (which is included FREE as part of SAS/IML software) have interactive graphics. This makes it easy to interrogate a graph to determine values of "hidden" variables that might not appear in the graph. For example, in a scatter plot in SAS/IML Studio, you
Calendar Heatmaps are an interesting alternative view of time-series data. The measured value is displayed as color mapped cells in a calendar. Calendar Heatmaps can be easily created with SAS 9.3 using just the HEATMAPPARM, SERIESPLOT and BLOCKPLOT statements in GTL and some simple data manipulation. The example below shows
The heatmap is a graphical representation of a table where colors are used to represent the values in the table. This is an effective graphic for finding the minimum and maximum values across the table and may surface patterns in the data. With the addition of the HEATMAPPARM statement to
Rick Wicklin's blog post on using abbreviations provided a solution for a long standing pain. When writing a new GTL program for simple graph, often the bulk of the code is boiler plate. To create a simple scatter plot of weight by height, you need to type in the following program:
The display of statistics, aligned with graphical plot of the data, is a common requirement for graphs, especially in the Clinical Research domain. In the previous post on Discrete Offset, I used an example of the Lipid Profile graph. Now, let us use the same example and add the display of statistics in
A reader commented to me that he wants to use the HISTOGRAM statement of the SGPLOT procedure to overlay two histograms on a single plot. He could do it, but unfortunately SAS was choosing a large bin width for one of the variables and a small bin width for the
Many people know that the SGPLOT procedure in SAS 9.2 can create a large number of interesting graphs. Some people also know how to create a panel of graphs (all of the same type) by using the SGPANEL procedure. But did you know that you can also create a panel
