Whether you are a SAS code creator, a blogger, a technical writer, an editor-in-chief, an executive, a secretary, a developer or programmer in any programming language or simply someone who uses computer or hand-held device for writing, you need to read this blog post – your life is about to
In my prior posts (Data-driven SAS macro loops, Modifying variable attributes in all datasets of a SAS library, Automating the loading of multiple database tables into SAS tables), I presented various data-driven applications using SAS macro loops. However, macro loops are not the only tools available in SAS for developing
Trivial Pursuit, Justin Bieber and Timbits. Some pretty great things have come from Canada, eh? Well, you can go ahead and add expert SAS programmers to that impressive list. In this video, six Canadian SAS programmers, with more than 115 years of SAS programming experience between them, share some of their favorite, little-known SAS programming tips. You're sure to discover a new trick or
SAS® offers several ways that you can find the top n% and bottom n% of data values based on a numeric variable. The RANK procedure with the GROUPS= option is one method. Another method is The UNIVARIATE procedure with the PCTLPTS= option. Because there are several ways to perform this
Have you ever written a macro and wondered if there was an easy way to pass values to the macro? You can by using macro parameters. Macro parameters enable you to pass values into the macro at macro invocation, and set default values for macro variables within the macro definition.
The ancient political maxim “divide and conquer” (Lat. “dīvide et īmpera”) has been used for millennia in politics, sociology, and psychology, mainly to manipulate people. In the last two centuries, however, this principle has also been adopted by computer science. It is widely used in computer programming, primarily in computer
Refining your data for effective reports is even easier in the 8.1 release of SAS Visual Analytics. In this blog post, I’ll take a look at the data pane, how it displays data from your active data source, and a few tasks that you might want to perform, such as
There are several exciting new features available in SAS Visual Analytics 8.1 that I know will excite you; this blog will show you how you can now configure cascading prompts for the Report Prompt and Page Prompt areas! Prior to SAS Visual Analytics 8.1 there was a way to use parameters to configure cascading prompts for
The Dw.p format displays numeric values, in a field w positions wide, possibly with a great range of values, lining up decimals for values of similar magnitude. The BESTDw.pformat combines the BESTw. format for integers and the Dw.p format for nonintegers. Specifying BESTDw.p (where p = w - 1) is better than specifying BESTw. for columns, since decimals do not shift when the last digit is 0.
How many times have you entered a phone number on a web page, only to be told that you did not type it the "correct" form? I find that annoying. Don't you? In my latest book, Cody's Data Cleaning Techniques, 3rd edition, I show how to convert a phone number
Elizabeth is courageous. Scoliosis since birth, corrective spinal surgery replaced her spine with steel, tripping on stairs permanently broke her right ankle. Then she decided to come take yoga with me. To help ease back pain & reduce hip stress, I offered options like bent legs not cross. In class
Technical Support regularly receives incoming calls from customers who have encountered the following transcoding warning: WARNING: Some character data was lost during transcoding in the data set xxx.xxx. Either the data contains characters that are not representable in the new encoding or truncation occurred during transcoding People are not always
When developing SAS applications, you can feed database tables into your application by using the libname access engine either by directly referring a database table, or via SAS or database views that themselves refer to one or more of the database tables. However, such on-the-fly data access may not be
When using the SAS® system to email graphics output, a common request is to use SAS to send an email in which the graphics output is embedded in the body of the email. This functionality is not available until the second maintenance release for SAS® 9.4 (TS1M2). If you are
Even if you are a traditional SAS programmer and have nothing to do with cybersecurity, you still probably have to deal with this issue in your day-to-day work. The world has changed, and what you do as a SAS programmer is not just between you and your computer anymore. However,
The full text of Fermat's statement, written in Latin, reads "Cubum autem in duos cubos, aut quadrato-quadratum in duos quadrato-quadratos, et generaliter nullam in infinitum ultra quadratum potestatem in duos eiusdem nominis fas est dividere cuius rei demonstrationem mirabilem sane detexi. Hanc marginis exiguitas non caperet." The English translation is:
There's an old song that starts out, "You Can Get Anything You Want at Alice's Restaurant." Well, maybe you are too young to know that song, but if you’re a SAS users, you’ll be glad to know that you can capture anything produced by any SAS procedure (even if the
There is a well-known Russian saying that goes “Если нельзя, но очень хочется, то можно.” The English translation of it can span anywhere from “If you can’t, but want it badly, then you can” to “If you shouldn’t, but want it badly, then you should” to “If you may not,
I have been using the SAS Viya environment for just over six months now and I absolutely love it. As a long-time SAS coder and data scientist I’m thrilled with the speed and greater accuracy I’m getting out of a lot of the same statistical techniques I once used in
SAS® users have an easy and convenient way to quickly obtain useful information (referred to as metadata) about their SAS session with a number of read-only SAS DICTIONARY tables or SASHELP views. At any time during a SAS session, information about currently defined system options, libnames, tables, columns and their
The code clinic at SAS Global Forum 2017 $0 copay, no deductible. No waiting rooms, no outdated magazines. What kind of doctor’s office is this? While we might not be able to help with that nasty cough, SAS Code Doctors are here to help – when it comes to your
Let’s look at the term “accessible” and how it relates to the SAS world. Accessible output is output that can be read by a screen reader to someone with low or no vision, visualized by someone with low vision or color blindness, or navigated by someone with limited mobility. In
Editor’s note: This is the third in a series of articles to help current SAS programmers add SAS Viya to their analytics skillset. In this post, Advisory Solutions Architect Steven Sober explores how to accomplish distributed data management using SAS Viya. Read additional posts in the series. In my last article I
Several months ago, I posted a blog about calculating moving averages for a measure in the Visual Analytics Designer. Soon after that, I was asked about calculating not only the average, but also the standard deviation over a period of months, when the data might consist of one or more
Editor’s note: This is the first in a series of articles to help current SAS programmers add SAS Viya to their analytics skillset. In this post, SAS instructors Stacey Syphus and Marc Huber introduce you to the new Transitioning from Programming in SAS 9 to SAS Viya video library, designed to show SAS programmers
The SAS® Output Delivery System provides the ability to generate output in various destination formats (for example, HTML, PDF, and Excel). One of the more recent destinations, ODS Excel, became production in the third maintenance release for SAS 9.4 (TS1M3). This destination enables you to generate native Microsoft Excel formatted
Small matters matter. Imagine saving (or spending wisely) just 1 second of your time every hour. One measly second! During your lifespan you would save or spend wisely (1 sec-an-hour * 24 hours-a-day * 365 days-a-year * 100 years) / (3600 seconds-an-hour * 24 hours-a-day) = 10 days, a whole
In a previous blog, Random Sampling: What's Efficient?, I discussed the efficiency of various techniques for selecting a simple random sample from a large SAS dataset. PROC SURVEYSELECT easily does the job: proc surveyselect data=large out=sample method=srs /* simple random sample */ rate=.01; /* 1% sample rate */ run; Note:
I remember my grandparents talking about how hard things were for them growing up. They would say, “Things were so bad that we had to walk uphill, both ways, in the freezing snow to get to school.” It was always hard for me to relate to these statements because the
SAS temporary arrays are an underutilized jewel in the SAS toolbox. I find that many beginning to intermediate SAS programmers are not familiar with temporary arrays. The good news is that there is nothing complicated about them and they are very useful. First of all, what is a temporary array?
