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Matt ScicchitanoOctober 17, 2017 0

Share your SAS Certification experience and maximize value

You know the value of your SAS Certification; does the rest of the world? A recent MONEY and Payscale.com study named SAS Analytics skills as the most valuable skills to have in today’s job market and certification is the best way to demonstrate those skills. Recognition like this helps solidify

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Data Visualization | Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Sanjay MatangeOctober 16, 2017 0

Tips and tricks - Multiple blank categories on axis

Off and on, users have expressed the need to include multiple blank categories on a discrete axis.  Often, this is desirable to separate groups of bars (or categories) in a graph due to some difference their definition.  Such a case was discussed in this blog article on using non breaking

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Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Jim SimonOctober 16, 2017 0

How to format a macro variable

Would you like to format your macro variables? Easy!  Just use the %FORMAT function, like this: What?! You never heard of the %FORMAT function? Of course not, cuz it doesn't exist! No problem. Just create it, like this: %macro format(value,format); %if %datatyp(&value)=CHAR %then %sysfunc(putc(&value,&format)); %else %left(%qsysfunc(putn(&value,&format))); %mend format; The %FORMAT

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Analytics | Data Visualization | Learn SAS

Rick WicklinOctober 16, 2017 0

Graphs for multiple comparisons of means: The lines plot

Last week Warren Kuhfeld wrote about a graph called the "lines plot" that is produced by SAS/STAT procedures in SAS 9.4M5. (Notice that the "lines plot" has an 's'; it is not a line plot!) The lines plot is produced as part of an analysis that performs multiple comparisons of

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Data Visualization | Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Sanjay MatangeOctober 14, 2017 0

New Features in SAS 9.40M5 - Gradient fills

ODS Graphics procedures primarily strive towards the following goal:  "Make simple graphs easy and complex graphs possible".   SGPLOT procedure allows you create simple graphs with a single plot statement, and create complex graphs by layering together or combining multiple plot statements.  Generally, the appearance follows the guidelines set by industry

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Analytics | Learn SAS

Jeff ZeanahOctober 11, 2017 0

Transforming Analytics into an Art Form

As analytics advances into more areas of our everyday life there is an increased need to understand just what it is that analytics is accomplishing for us.  I find there is a quicker acceptance of an analytical solution and even excitement if there is a good conceptual understanding of what

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Data Visualization | Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Warren F. KuhfeldOctober 9, 2017 0

Advanced ODS Graphics: Axis tables that contain special characters

This blog provides a general macro that enables you to easily display special characters (Unicode) in axis table columns.

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Data Visualization | Learn SAS

Ryan KumpfmillerOctober 9, 2017 0

An introduction to SAS Visual Analytics: the Parallel Period function of the Derived Item calculations

My new SAS Press book “An Introduction to SAS Visual Analytics” (written in collaboration with Tricia Aanderud and Rob Collum) covers all of the different aspects of SAS® Visual Analytics, including how to develop reports, load data, and handle administration. Below is an example of the types of tips that you can find

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Data Visualization | Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Sanjay MatangeOctober 6, 2017 0

New features with SAS 9.40 M5

SAS 9.4 maintenance release 5 was released on Sept 19, 2017.  This release includes many new items including integration with SAS Viya and SAS Studio, a web application for SAS development.  Also Included with this release are some cool new features in the graphics domain, some of which were requested

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Learn SAS

Larry LaRussoOctober 5, 2017 0

Learning in the middle of the night - or whenever

Sometimes life is just too busy, and I bet many of you feel the same way. If you’re like me, you’re playing a number of roles: employee, spouse, parent, community leader, coach and so on. With all the craziness, it’s likely we’re shortchanging another role that’s critically important to our

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Analytics | Data Visualization | Learn SAS

Rick WicklinOctober 4, 2017 0

Create and interpret a weighted histogram

If you perform a weighted statistical analysis, it can be useful to produce a statistical graph that also incorporates the weights. This article shows how to construct and interpret a weighted histogram in SAS. How to construct a weighted histogram Before constructing a weighted histogram, let's review the construction of

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Analytics | Learn SAS

Rick WicklinOctober 2, 2017 0

How to understand weight variables in statistical analyses

How can you specify weights for a statistical analysis? Hmmm, that's a "weighty" question! Many people on discussion forums ask "What is a weight variable?" and "How do you choose a weight for each observation?" This article gives a brief overview of weight variables in statistics and includes examples of

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Analytics | Data Visualization | Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Sanjay MatangeOctober 1, 2017 0

Getting started with SGPLOT - Part 8 - Horizontal HighLow Plot

On a recent visit to an In-House Users Group meeting at a Pharmaceutical company, I presented a 1/2 day seminar on creating Clinical Graphs using SG Procedures.  Polling the audience for their experience with these procedures indicated that many SAS users are not familiar with these new ways to create graphs. So,

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Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Rick WicklinSeptember 27, 2017 0

Data-driven simulation

In a large simulation study, it can be convenient to have a "control file" that contains the parameters for the study. My recent article about how to simulate multivariate normal clusters demonstrates a simple example of this technique. The simulation in that article uses an input data set that contains

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Analytics | Learn SAS

Rick WicklinSeptember 20, 2017 0

Fisher's transformation of the correlation coefficient

Pearson's correlation measures the linear association between two variables. Because the correlation is bounded between [-1, 1], the sampling distribution for highly correlated variables is highly skewed. Even for bivariate normal data, the skewness makes it challenging to estimate confidence intervals for the correlation, to run one-sample hypothesis tests ("Is

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Data Visualization | Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Warren F. KuhfeldSeptember 18, 2017 0

Advanced ODS Graphics: Inserting a graph into a graph

You can use SG Annotation (and its GTL equivalent) to display one graph inside another.

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Data Visualization | Learn SAS

Rick WicklinSeptember 18, 2017 0

The path of zip codes

Toe bone connected to the foot bone, Foot bone connected to the leg bone, Leg bone connected to the knee bone,...              — American Spiritual, "Dem Bones" Last week I read an interesting article on Robert Kosara's data visualization blog. Kosara connected the geographic centers of the US zip codes in

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Advanced Analytics | Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Rick WicklinSeptember 13, 2017 0

Simulate multivariate clusters in SAS

This article shows how to simulate data from a mixture of multivariate normal distributions, which is also called a Gaussian mixture. You can use this simulation to generate clustered data. The adjacent graph shows three clusters, each simulated from a four-dimensional normal distribution. Each cluster has its own within-cluster covariance,

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Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Rick WicklinSeptember 7, 2017 0

Construct polynomial effects in SAS regression models

If you use SAS regression procedures, you are probably familiar with the "stars and bars" notation, which enables you to construct interaction effects in regression models. Although you can construct many regression models by using that classical notation, a friend recently reminded me that the EFFECT statement in SAS provides

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SAS JediAugust 29, 2017 0

Jedi SAS Tricks - Variable Lists by Text Pattern

I hate hard-coding variable lists in my SAS code. I love the special variable lists SAS provides, like name:, _numeric_, etc. But back in 2011, I wrote a post titled Jedi SAS Tricks - Building a Name Suffix variable list lamenting the lack of a special variable list in base

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Learn SAS

Larry LaRussoAugust 28, 2017 0

Learn SAS from wherever you are: Live Web classes go global

My daughter is a junior in high school, and for almost every semester she’s taken an online course as part of her studies. This semester she’s taking Spanish 3, an advanced level course where every word of instruction is spoken in Spanish. Each morning she joins the class from our

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Analytics | Learn SAS | SAS Events

Mike JanesAugust 24, 2017 0

Learn neural networks and more at Analytics Experience 2017

What’s your favorite time of day?  For me, it’s the morning with a cup of coffee, just as the sun starts to appear on the horizon, emitting a pleasant warm glow.  My least favorite part of the day?  Mornings without coffee when that same big ball of light makes a

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Learn SAS | Programming Tips | Students & Educators

Matt ScicchitanoAugust 24, 2017 0

How to prepare for a SAS Certification Exam

I have been working in the field of Professional Certification and Licensure for roughly 10 years. In that time, I've worked with and observed close to 40 IT certification programs and there has been a recurring question I've encountered at each stop. While it is often phrased differently, it means mostly the same

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Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Kevin RussellAugust 21, 2017 0

Always save your code when creating a stored compiled macro

The stored compiled macro facility enables you to compile and save your macro definition in a permanent catalog in a library that you specify. The macro is compiled only once. When you call the macro in the current and subsequent SAS® sessions, SAS executes the compiled code from the macro

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Learn SAS | SAS Events

Mark BaileyAugust 16, 2017 0

Which of my factors are important?

This question has been asked repeatedly for decades by anyone facing a new system. That system might be a new product, a new piece of equipment, a new process, or anything really that is new and not well understood. Ultimately, you might need to change this system but first you

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Learn SAS

SAS JediAugust 16, 2017 0

Jedi SAS Tips - Favorite Resources for SAS Programmers

I frequently get asked about my favorite book on a particular topic, how to find free SAS learning materials online, how to get help with SAS issues, etc. This lead me to compile a "Great Resources for SAS Programmers" document which I freely share with my students upon request. So

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Analytics | Learn SAS

Rick WicklinAugust 14, 2017 0

What is rank correlation?

When someone refers to the correlation between two variables, they are probably referring to the Pearson correlation, which is the standard statistic that is taught in elementary statistics courses. Elementary courses do not usually mention that there are other measures of correlation. Why would anyone want a different estimate of

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Advanced Analytics | Learn SAS

Kattamuri SarmaAugust 10, 2017 0

3 steps to prepare your data for accurate predictive models in SAS Enterprise Miner

In this post I describe the important tasks of data preparation, exploration and binning.These three steps enable you to know your data well and build accurate predictive models. First you need to clean your data. Cleaning includes eliminating variables which have uneven spread across the target variable. I give an

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Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Leonid BatkhanAugust 2, 2017 0

CALL EXECUTE made easy for SAS data-driven programming

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

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Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Rick WicklinJuly 31, 2017 0

Flip it. Flip it good.

A SAS user needed to convert a program from MATLAB into the SAS/IML matrix language and asked whether there is a SAS/IML equivalent to the fliplr and flipud functions in MATLAB. These functions flip the columns or rows (respectively) of a matrix; "LR" stands for "left-right" and "UD" stands for

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