A data analyst wanted to estimate the correlation between two variables, but he was concerned about the influence of a confounding variable that is correlated with them. The correlation might affect the apparent relationship between main two variables in the study. A common confounding variable is age because young people
This article is about how to use Git to share SAS programs, specifically how to share libraries of SAS IML functions. Some IML programmers might remember an earlier way to share libraries of functions: SAS/IML released "packages" in SAS 9.4m3 (2015), which enable you to create, document, share, and use
SAS supports the ColorBrewer system of color palettes from the ColorBrewer website (Brewer and Harrower, 2002). The ColorBrewer color ramps are available in SAS by using the PALETTE function in SAS IML software. The PALETTE function supports all ColorBrewer palettes, but some palettes are not interpretable by people with color
Many experienced SAS programmers use the PUT statement to write messages to the log from a DATA step. But did you know that SAS supports the PUTLOG function, which is another way to write a message to the log? I use the PUTLOG statement in the DATA step for the
The addition of the PYTHON procedure and Python editor in SAS Viya enables users to execute Python code in SAS Studio. This new capability in SAS Viya adds another tool to SAS's existing collection. With this addition I thought, how can I utilize this new found power? In this example,
Welcome back to my SAS Users blog series CAS Action! - a series on fundamentals. If you'd like to start by learning more about the distributed CAS server and CAS actions, please see CAS Actions and Action Sets - a brief intro. Otherwise, let's learn how to rename columns in CAS tables.
In this SAS administration tutorial Leonid Batkhan presents various SAS programming solutions on how to identify and prevent duplicate LIBREFs in SAS 9 metadata.
Every year, I write a special article for Halloween in which I show a SAS programming TRICK that is a real TREAT! This year, the trick is to concatenate two strings into a single string in a way that guarantees you can always recover the original strings. I learned this
Have you ever typed your credit card into an online order form and been told that you entered the wrong number? Perhaps you wondered, "How do they know that the numbers I typed do not make a valid credit card number?" The answer is that credit card numbers and other
The correlations between p variables are usually displayed by using a symmetric p x p matrix of correlations. However, sometimes you might prefer to see the correlations listed in "long form" as a three-column table, as shown to the right. In this table, each row shows a pair of variables and the
John Tukey was an influential statistician who proposed many statistical concepts. In the 1960s and 70s, he was fundamental in the discovery and exposition of robust statistical methods, and he was an ardent proponent of exploratory data analysis (EDA). In his 1977 book, Exploratory Data Analysis, he discussed a small
A SAS programmer asked for help on a discussion forum: "My SAS session will not display any tables or graphs! I try to use PROC PRINT and other procedures, but no output is displayed! What can I do?" The most common reasons why you might not see any output when
I've previously shown how to use Monte Carlo simulation to estimate probabilities and areas. I illustrated the Monte Carlo method by estimating π ≈ 3.14159... by generating points uniformly at random in a unit square and computing the proportion of those points that were inside the unit circle. The previous
A colleague was struggling to compute a right-tail probability for a distribution. Recall that the cumulative distribution function (CDF) is defined as a left-tail probability. For a continuous random variable, X, with density function f, the CDF at the value x is F(x) = Pr(X ≤ x) = ∫
A SAS programmer wanted to create a panel that contained two of the graphs side-by-side. The graphs were created by using calls to two different SAS procedures. This article shows how to select the graphs and arrange them side-by-side by using the ODS LAYOUT GRIDDED statement. The end of the
Leonid Batkhan shows how to split a data table into multiple Excel spreadsheets in a single workbook.
Many people know that you can use "WHERE processing" in SAS to filter observations. A typical use is to process only observations that match some criterion. For example, the following WHERE statement processes only observations for male patients who have high blood pressure: WHERE Sex='Male' & Systolic > 140; In
Leonid Batkhan shows you how to automate and improve a sometimes onerous hands-on process of creating Excel workbooks.
A palindrome is a sequence of letters that is the same when read forward and backward. In brief, if you reverse the sequence of letters, the word is unchanged. For example, 'mom' and 'racecar' are palindromes. You can extend the definition to phrases by removing all spaces and punctuation marks
Welcome back to my SAS Users blog series CAS Action! - a series on fundamentals. This post builds upon CAS-Action! Create Columns in CAS Tables - Part 1 by showing how to add formats and modify the length of computed columns. I'll start by building off the following code where I
In an article about how to visualize missing data in a heat map, I noted that the SAS SG procedures (such as PROC SGPLOT) use the GraphMissing style element to color a bar or tile that represents a missing value. In the HTMLBlue ODS style, the color for missing values
One approach to creating the Wordle game in the SAS programming language. Ready to play?
An experienced SAS programmer recently switched to SAS Viya and asked how to discover what products are available on his version of Viya. We discussed a few older SAS 9 procedures, and I showed him a new Viya-specific way to get information about his version of SAS and his licensed
SAS' Mark Jordan shows you how to modify data using PROC SQL, PROC DATASETS and SAS macros.
Several probability distributions model the outcomes of various trials when the probabilities of certain events are given. For some distributions, the definitions make sense even when a probability is 0. For other distributions, the definitions do not make sense unless all probabilities are strictly positive. This article examines how zero
Some colors have names, such as "Red," "Magenta," and "Dark Olive Green." But the most common way to specify a color is to use a hexadecimal value such as CX556B2F. It is not obvious that "Dark Olive Green" and CX556B2F represent the same color, but they do! I like to
When SAS 9 programmers transition to SAS Viya, there are inevitably questions about how new concepts in Cloud Analytic Services (CAS) relate to similar concepts in SAS. This article discusses the question, "What is the difference between a libref and a caslib?" Both are used to access data, but they
SAS' Leonid Batkhan reveals how to use versatile iterative DO loops with index variable pertaining to SAS DATA steps.
A SAS programmer noticed that his SAS output was not displaying multiple blanks in his strings. He had some strings with leading blanks, others with trailing blanks, and others with multiple blanks in the middle. Yet, every time he used SAS to print the strings to the HTML destination, something
SAS Global Certification is pleased to announce two (yes two!) new SAS Viya programming certifications. Traditional SAS programmers need to migrate their code and data to SAS Viya environments, and there are important skills required to make a successful transition. SAS Viya includes Cloud Analytic Services (CAS), where data is
