We all know the importance of understanding the data you are working with. After all, the best programmers we know have combined their lifelong pursuit of programming knowledge with a similar pursuit of some specific subject matter. I have programmed in SAS for about 15 years and have pursued expertise
When you run a program or task in SAS Enterprise Guide, the application wraps your job in an "ODS sandwich", the colloquial term we use for the ODS statements necessary to create output that can be viewed in your project. That's convenient for exploring and refining your program, but at
These two tutorial videos will show you how to filter and sort data in Base SAS. In this first video, you will learn to use a WHERE statement in Base SAS to filter or subset SAS data. Data sets can be very large and filtering data enables you to select
My daughter's middle school math class recently reviewed how to compute the greatest common factor (GCF) and the least common multiple (LCM) of a set of integers. (The GCF is sometimes called the greatest common divisor, or GCD.) Both algorithms require factoring integers into a product of primes. While helping
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
Has this ever happened to you? You have a SAS program with statements that you wrote, then you make use of a macro function or %include file supplied by a helpful colleague, and when your SAS code resumes, you find that all of your SAS titles have been changed out
A couple of years ago I shared a method for copying any file within a SAS program. It was a simple approach, copying the file byte-by-byte from one fileref (SAS file reference) to another. My colleague Bruno Müller, a SAS trainer in Switzerland, has since provided a much more robust
Last week I presented two talks at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, which has established a new Graduate Certificate in Applied Data Analysis Using SAS. While in Milwaukee, I ran into an old friend: the ODS LISTING destination. One of my presentations was a hands-on workshop titled Getting Started
Recently I wrote about how to determine the age of your SAS release. Experienced SAS programmers know that you can programatically determine information about your SAS release by using certain automatic macro variables that SAS provides: SYSVER: contains the major and minor version of the SAS release SYSVLONG: contains the
Even the best programmers make mistakes. For most errors, SAS software displays the nature and location of the error, returns control to the programmer, and awaits further instructions. However, there are a handful of insidious errors that cause SAS to think that a statement or program is not finished. For
In SAS 9.4, the SAS programming language continues add new features by the truckload. I've already discussed PROC DELETE (which is actually an old feature, but like an 80s hit song it's now back with a better version). In this SAS Tech Talk video from SAS Global Forum 2013, I
With the pervasiveness of mobile devices, being able to read while “on the go” has been easier than ever. How many times have you found yourself in a situation where you pass the time waiting by reading something on your phone/iPad/tablet etc? With eBooks on my iPad, I find that
Tried, tested and true -- I’m sure you already practice some, if not all, of these efficient techniques to save resources. I recently shared these 10 techniques with the Wisconsin Illinois SAS users group in Milwaukee. The conference ran smoothly under the incredibly able guidance of Dr. LeRoy Bessler. I’ll
Every programming language has an IF-THEN statement that branches according to whether a Boolean expression is true or false. In SAS, the IF-THEN (or IF-THEN/ELSE) statement evaluates an expression and braches according to whether the expression is nonzero (true) or zero (false). The basic syntax is if numeric-expression then do-computation;
When I work on SAS projects that create lots of files as results, it's often a requirement that those files be organized in a certain folder structure. The exact structure depends on the project, but here's an example: /results |__ html |__ images |__ xls |__ data Before you can
I am not a big fan of the macro language, and I try to avoid it when I write SAS/IML programs. I find that the programs with many macros are hard to read and debug. Furthermore, the SAS/IML language supports loops and indexing, so many macro constructs can be replaced
If you've watched any of the demos for SAS Visual Analytics (or even tried it yourself!), you have probably seen this nifty exploration of multiple measures. It's a way to look at how multiple measures are correlated with one another, using a diagonal heat map chart. The "stronger" the color
One of the great things about SAS libraries is that you can write your programs to read and write data without having to worry about where the data lives. SAS data set on a file system? Oracle table in a database server? Hadoop data in Hive? For many SAS applications,
I've conducted a lot of univariate analyses in SAS, yet I'm always surprised when the best way to carry out the analysis uses a SAS regression procedure. I always think, "This is a univariate analysis! Why am I using a regression procedure? Doesn't a regression require at least two variables?"
Are you a new SAS user who isn't sure where to begin? Have no fear, because you're not alone. Here at SAS, we often receive questions from people who need help getting started with the software. Getting Started with SAS is the topic of a SAS Talks session that I
The SAS/IML language has a curious syntax that enables you to specify a "repetition factor" when you initialize a vector of literal values. Essentially, the language enables you to specify the frequency of an element. For example, suppose you want to define the following vector: proc iml; x = {1
Suppose you have an old jalopy that's perfectly reliable. Your jalopy gets you where you wanna go: no frills; no drama. Do you trade your old wheels in for a racecar that accelerates like crazy and corners like it's on rails? Or stick with what's old and comfortable? Your choice
SAS macro variables are a great way to store a calculated value, so you can use it later in your code. They are not just limited to the data step -- you can also use macro variables in title statements, axis statements, etc. By default, the macro variable will be padded with
Many of my blogging colleagues are taking this week to reflect on their top posts in 2012. Some are using the visitor statistics to rank the posts, but as Andy Ratcliffe points out, that gives short-shrift to the late-season articles. This year, I'm going to use this space to recap
I used "Dropbox" in the title for this post, but these techniques can be used for other cloud-based file sharing services, such as GitHub and Google Drive. Using PROC HTTP (added in SAS 9.2), you can easily access any "cloud-based" file as long as you have a public link to
I was recently asked, "Does SAS support computing inverse hyperbolic trigonometric functions?" I was pretty sure that I had used the inverse hyperbolic trig functions in SAS, so I was surprised when I read the next sentence: "I ask because I saw a Usage Note that says these functions are
We are careening towards the holiday season, and this year more than ever before it's going to mean one thing: Online Shopping. As you enter your credit card number over and over to complete your many purchases, you might occasionally transpose or mistype your account number. Does it surprise you
I was looking at some SAS documentation when I saw a Base SAS function that I never knew existed. The NWKDOM function returns the date for the nth occurrence of a weekday for the specified month and year. I surely could have used that function last spring when I blogged
What's in a name? As Shakespeare's Juliet said, "That which we call a rose / By any other name would smell as sweet." A similar statement holds true for the names of colors in SAS: "Rose" by any other name would look as red! SAS enables you to specify a
According to the Daily Writing Tips blog, describing a thing as "somewhat unique" is bad form. Unique means "one of a kind", so either it is or it is not. The famous example (which the style police will use to chide you) is that you can't have something as "somewhat
