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Data Visualization

Sanjay MatangeFebruary 13, 2012 0

Beer, diapers and heat map

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

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Advanced Analytics | Data Visualization | Programming Tips

Angela HallFebruary 9, 2012 0

Best practices for refreshing production OLAP cubes

Unlike prior versions of SAS OLAP technology, 9.2 provides more options for maintaining and refreshing OLAP cubes. With this comes some discussion about what each one does alone, and how pairing these techniques really provides SAS OLAP Server Administrators and cube developers a cornucopia of OLAP options. PROC OLAPOPERATE Remember

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Data Visualization

Sanjay MatangeFebruary 9, 2012 0

SG Procedures Book Samples: Adverse Event Timeline

Here is the second installment of sample graphs from the SG Procedures book - The Adverse Event Timeline. This is a graph commonly used in patient profiles for clinical trials where we track the progress of a patient through a hospitalization event, tracking the dates and severity of the adverse events. The

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Advanced Analytics | Data Visualization | Programming Tips

Angela HallFebruary 7, 2012 0

The best part of writing a book is learning something new

Many of the chapters in my new book Building Business Intelligence Using SAS: Content Development Examples were straightforward to write but one in particular was the beast. Neither Tricia nor I wanted to tackle the SAS BI Dashboard chapter. Just chalk it up to no major work experience with this

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Data Visualization

Sanjay MatangeFebruary 6, 2012 0

Comparative density plots

Recently a user posted a question on the SAS/GRAPH and ODS Graphics Communities page on how to plot the normal density curves for two classification levels in the same graph. We have often seen examples of a distribution plot of one variable using a histogram with normal and kernel density curves. Here is a simple example: Code Snippet:

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Data Visualization

Sanjay MatangeFebruary 1, 2012 0

SG Procedures Book Samples: Forest Plot

In December of last year, the book "Statistical Graphics Procedures by Example" co-authored by Dan Heath and I was published. On the back cover, it proclaims "Free Code on the Web". Now, who can resist such an offer? Since most of the examples in the book have very short syntax,

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Advanced Analytics | Data Visualization | Programming Tips

Angela HallFebruary 1, 2012 0

Complete your order using preview results in SAS Add-in to MS Office

Recently I've made several online purchases buying eBooks for the new Amazon Kindle my daughter received as a holiday gift. The online checkout process is very straight-forward, especially with the 'Continue' buttons that change to a 'Place your order' button on the final step. Did you know that the same

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Data Visualization

Dan HeathJanuary 30, 2012 0

A (tool)tip for band plots

Recently, I had a discussion with a user concerning the volume of imagemap data generated for an interactive, web-based visual contain a large number of graphs. The large amount of imagemap data was causing problems with the current version of their web browser. The graphs consisted of either bar charts

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Advanced Analytics | Data Visualization | Programming Tips

Angela HallJanuary 27, 2012 0

SAS BI Dashboard: It's all in a name

When developing content in SAS BI Dashboard, such as indicators, ranges, and dashboards, knowing how to name them is pretty important. If changes are required later (for instance to improve the administrators capability of partial promoting content) much more work is required to ensure the links between the objects isn't

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Data Visualization

Sanjay MatangeJanuary 26, 2012 0

Nested graphs

Here are a couple of bar charts showing the city mileage of cars by Type and Origin using the SGPLOT procedure from the sashelp.cars dataset. title 'Vehicle Mileage by Type'; proc sgplot data=cars; format mpg_city 4.1; vbar type / response=mpg_city stat=mean datalabel; xaxis display=(nolabel); run; title 'Counts by Country'; proc sgplot

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Advanced Analytics | Data Visualization | Programming Tips

Angela HallJanuary 25, 2012 0

New job, same technology, huge customer value

As many of you have already noticed, my LinkedIn profile and the blog profile blurb have changed. I took on an exciting new job in the SAS Solutions OnDemand team. The official title is Software Development Manager, but what I really do is lead a team of fraud solution architects.

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Data Visualization

Sanjay MatangeJanuary 23, 2012 0

Timeseries plots with regimes

Recently we discussed the features of the Shiller Graph, showing long term housing values in the USA. To understand the features necesary in the SGPLOT procedure to create such graph easily, it was useful to see how far we can go using GTL as released with SAS 9.2(M3). I got the data Shiller Housing index data

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Data Visualization

Dan HeathJanuary 19, 2012 0

They go where you put them

An issue that SAS/GRAPH users have wrestled with in the past has been how to put tick marks at irregular intervals on their axes. In PROC GPLOT, if you specify irregular intervals using the ORDER option on the AXIS statement, the procedure’s axis kicks into a “discrete” mode, where the

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Data Visualization

Sanjay MatangeJanuary 16, 2012 0

The more the merrier

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

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Data Visualization

Sanjay MatangeJanuary 12, 2012 0

Custom confidence intervals

Recently a user posted a question on the SAS/GRAPH and ODS Graphics Forum about drawing a plot with custom confidence intervals . The user has a simple data set with category, response (mean) and custom lower and upper confidence intervals. The data looks like this: Robert Allison provided the code (proc gplot +

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Data Visualization

Sanjay MatangeJanuary 9, 2012 0

In good company

A recent post on the SAS website shows the SAS Annual Revenue History. It would be interesting to see how we could create such a graph using SG procedures, and how we could add more information and interest in the presentation. So, I started with the basic informaiton on the annual revenues provided,

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Data Visualization

Sanjay MatangeJanuary 5, 2012 0

Panel graph with axis-aligned statistics

Following up on the theme of graphs commonly used in many applications, here is another one that displays a horizontal bar chart with multiple data columns aligned with the bars. Recently at WUSS, a user stopped by asking how to create just such a graph. While this user wanted something more complex

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Data Visualization

Sanjay MatangeJanuary 2, 2012 0

Simply useful

Let us ring in the new year with something simple and useful. A recent question by a user over the holidays motivated this article on what is likely a commonly used graph. We want to compare the preformance of two categories along with a third measure. This could be something like "How

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Data Visualization

Dan HeathDecember 22, 2011 0

Creating graphs can be a (multi-layered) piece of cake

When I give presentations on using the SG procedures, I try to describe how you can take simple plots and layer them to create more complex graphs. I also emphasize how you must consider the output of each plot type so that, as you overlay them, you do not obscure

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Data Visualization

Sanjay MatangeDecember 19, 2011 0

Map overlays

In Simple maps can go a long way, we discussed some techniques to create simple outline maps from map datasets in the MAPS library using GTL. Now, let us take this a step further to do something more useful with this feature. For some graphs, the map information is an essential part of the

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Data Visualization

Sanjay MatangeDecember 15, 2011 0

Secrets of statistical graphics procedures revealed

A new book from SAS Press, "Statistical Graphics Procedures by Example" co-authored by Dan Heath and I has now been published (phew!). For both Dan and I, this was our first foray into writing a book, so it was highly educational to say the least. The key idea behind the presentation

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Data Visualization

Sanjay MatangeDecember 12, 2011 0

Simple maps can go a long way

Charlie Huang recently posted an article on a new way to draw maps using SGPlot procedure. The basic idea is simple, just use the SCATTER statement to plot the (x, y) points from the data sets in the MAPS library. The GROUP option can be used to color the markers for each

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Data Visualization

Pratik PhadkeDecember 8, 2011 0

Calendar Heatmaps in GTL

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

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Advanced Analytics | Data Visualization | Programming Tips

Angela HallDecember 8, 2011 0

Building custom measures for OLAP cubes

In one minute (and 10 seconds, but are you measuring that?) you can add a custom measure (also known as calculated members) to your OLAP cube. Watch this video to create a simple calculation multiplying units * price. Remember that this mechanism is not just used for multiplications, you can

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Data Visualization

Sanjay MatangeDecember 6, 2011 0

Adding a spark to your data

When viewing time series data, often we only want to see the trend in the data over time and we are not so concerned about the actual data values. With multiple time series plots, forecasting software can find clusters to help us view series with similar trends. Recently I saw a graph showing the trend of unemployment

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Advanced Analytics | Data Visualization | Programming Tips

Dropping into the abyss of Detail Data

Angela HallDecember 5, 2011 0

OLAP users can fall into the abyss of detail data

OLAP cube developers might have noticed that the amount of time required to generate any aggregation (including the NWAY) can negatively impact their productivity. Developers remove the NWAY aggregation (following the sample screens in a prior post) to significantly reduce build time and allow quick modifications to the cube definition.

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Data Visualization

Prashant HebbbarDecember 1, 2011 0

Graphs you can ‘bank’ on with aspect ratio

The dimensions of your graph can affect the aspect ratio, which in turn, can subtly affect the perception of your viewers. When visual perception is of prime importance, the aspect ratio of the graph needs to be adjusted with care. This technique is known as ‘banking’, was introduced by William

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Data Visualization

Sanjay MatangeNovember 28, 2011 0

Survival Plot with external "At Risk" table

A frequently asked question about the Survival Plot is: "How can I display the 'At Risk' data outside the plot area?". The survival plot rendered by the LIFETEST procedure displays the at risk data inside the plot data area. The reason for this is the potential for varying number of treatment groups. Here

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Data Visualization

Sanjay MatangeNovember 23, 2011 0

SGPLOT with axis-aligned statistics columns

In a previous article we discussed how to add axis aligned statistics table to a Lipid graph using GTL. Other graphs such as the Survival Plot also utilize the same technique to display the "at risk" statistics aligned by time or visits along the X axis. Often, we also need to display

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Data Visualization

Pratik PhadkeNovember 21, 2011 0

Creating Heatmaps using GTL

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

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