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Learn SAS

Learn about the latest tips, tutorials, upcoming events and certifications

Data Visualization | Learn SAS

Scott HicksMay 21, 2019 0

Essentials of Map Coordinate Systems and Projections in Visual Analytics

If you spend any time working with maps and spatial data, having a fundamental understanding of coordinate systems and map projections becomes necessary. It’s the foundation of how spatial data and maps work. These areas invariably evoke trepidation and some angst, even in the most seasoned map professional. And rightfully

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Learn SAS

Missy HannahMay 17, 2019 0

Do books count as endangered species?

As a publishing house inside of SAS, we often hear: “Does anyone want to read books anymore?” Especially technical programmers who are “too busy” to read. About a quarter of American adults (24%) say they haven’t read a book in whole or in part in the past year, whether in

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Analytics | Learn SAS

Rick WicklinMay 15, 2019 0

What is Kolmogorov's D statistic?

Have you ever run a statistical test to determine whether data are normally distributed? If so, you have probably used Kolmogorov's D statistic. Kolmogorov's D statistic (also called the Kolmogorov-Smirnov statistic) enables you to test whether the empirical distribution of data is different than a reference distribution. The reference distribution

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Data Visualization | Learn SAS | Programming Tips

PROC SGMAP SCATTER of Movie Locations

Kelly MillsMay 14, 2019 0

Geocoding US Street Addresses and Plotting Them with PROC SGMAP

I met many SAS programmers at the 2019 SAS Global Forum who geocode addresses using ArcGIS. Did you know that street address locations and other things can be found using the SAS GEOCODE procedure? PROC GEOCODE gives you coordinates for address, ZIP codes, ZIP+4 codes and cities. You can even

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Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Rick WicklinMay 13, 2019 0

Write to a SAS data set from inside a SAS/IML loop

In SAS/IML programs, a common task is to write values in a matrix to a SAS data set. For some programs, the values you want to write are in a matrix and you use the CREATE FROM/APPEND FROM syntax to create the data set, as follows: proc iml; X =

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Learn SAS

Missy HannahMay 10, 2019 0

Happy National Limerick Day from SAS Press!

May 12th is #NationalLimerickDay! If you saw our Valentine’s Day poem, you know we at SAS Press love creating poems and fun rhymes, so check out our limericks below! So, what’s a limerick? National Limerick Day is observed each year on May 12th and honors the birthday of the famed

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Analytics | Learn SAS

Rick WicklinMay 1, 2019 0

Encodings of CLASS variables in SAS regression procedures: A cheat sheet

SAS regression procedures support several parameterizations of classification variables. When a categorical variable is used as an explanatory variable in a regression model, the procedure generates dummy variables that are used to construct a design matrix for the model. The process of forming columns in a design matrix is called

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Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Rick WicklinApril 29, 2019 0

The normal mixture distribution in SAS

Did you know that SAS provides built-in support for working with probability distributions that are finite mixtures of normal distributions? This article shows examples of using the "NormalMix" distribution in SAS and describes a trick that enables you to easily work with distributions that have many components. As with all

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Learn SAS | Students & Educators

Sean O'BrienApril 29, 2019 0

New AI offerings highlight many free ways to learn SAS

SAS Viya for Learners offers free access to AI and machine learning software for higher education teaching and learning, hosted in a new learning portal by SAS.

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Analytics | Learn SAS | SAS Events | Students & Educators

Trent SmithApril 28, 2019 0

SAS celebrates analytics talent, and those who shape it

A persistent analytics talent gap creates big opportunities for people who can wield analytics to help organizations make better decisions. Innovative analytics users and students who are rushing to fill that gap, and those who teach them, are being honored this week at SAS Global Forum. A special Sunday event

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Learn SAS | Programming Tips | SAS Administrators

Joe FurbeeApril 8, 2019 0

Launching the Developers Community in SAS Communities

As word spreads that SAS integrates with open source technologies, people are beginning to explore how to connect, interact with, and use SAS in new ways. More and more users are examining the possibilities and with this comes questions like: How do I code A, integrate B, and accomplish C?

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Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Rick WicklinApril 8, 2019 0

Use the FLOOR-MOD trick to allocate items to groups

Suppose you need to assign 100 patients equally among 3 treatment groups in a clinical study. Obviously, an equal allocation is impossible because the second number does not evenly divide the first, but you can get close by assigning 34 patients to one group and 33 to the others. Mathematically,

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Data Visualization | Learn SAS | SAS Events

Scott HicksApril 8, 2019 0

Why Maps matter: Lessons learned from London's 1854 Cholera outbreak

The catch phrase “everything happens somewhere” is increasingly common these days. That “somewhere” translates into a location on the Earth; a latitude and longitude. When one of these “somewhere’s” is combined with many other “somewhere’s”, you quickly have a robust spatial data set that becomes actionable with the right analytic

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Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Rick WicklinApril 3, 2019 0

Convergence in mixed models: When the estimated G matrix is not positive definite

I've previously written about how to deal with nonconvergence when fitting generalized linear regression models. Most generalized linear and mixed models use an iterative optimization process, such as maximum likelihood estimation, to fit parameters. The optimization might not converge, either because the initial guess is poor or because the model

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Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Rick WicklinApril 1, 2019 0

Matrix operations and BY groups

Many SAS procedures support the BY statement, which enables you to perform an analysis for subgroups of the data set. Although the SAS/IML language does not have a built-in "BY statement," there are various techniques that enable you to perform a BY-group analysis. The two I use most often are

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Data Visualization | Learn SAS

Scott HicksMarch 27, 2019 0

Creating custom region maps with SAS Visual Analytics

SAS Visual Analytics supports region maps for Country, US states, and provinces out-of-the-box. These work well for small scale maps covering the world, a continent, or a single country. However, other regions are often needed. Beginning in version 8.3, VA supports custom polygons to display regions such as sales territories,

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Data Visualization | Learn SAS

Rick WicklinMarch 20, 2019 0

Truncate response surfaces

An analyst was using SAS to analyze some data from an experiment. He noticed that the response variable is always positive (such as volume, size, or weight), but his statistical model predicts some negative responses. He posted the data and asked if it is possible to modify the graph so

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Data Visualization | Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Martin MinceyMarch 15, 2019 0

How to view or create ODS output without causing SAS® to stop responding or run slowly

SAS makes it easy for you to create a large amount of procedure output with very few statements. However, when you create a large amount of procedure output with the Output Delivery System (ODS), your SAS session might stop responding or run slowly. In some cases, SAS generates a “Not

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Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Rick WicklinMarch 11, 2019 0

How to detect SAS data sets that contain (or do not contain) character variables

A SAS programmer posted an interesting question on a SAS discussion forum. The programmer wanted to iterate over hundreds of SAS data sets, read in all the character variables, and then do some analysis. However, not every data set contains character variables, and SAS complains when you ask it to

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Data for Good | Learn SAS | Students & Educators

Sian RobertsMarch 7, 2019 0

Breaking down walls for science: SAS Press donates books to the world’s largest research methods library

In a move to combat "stataphobia" and foster excellence in statistics in developing countries, SAS Press last month donated 70 SAS Press titles to the Serageldin Research Library at the Library of Alexandria in Egypt. The library’s mission is to achieve statistical equity so that a student in Chad has

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Data Visualization | Learn SAS

Rick WicklinMarch 6, 2019 0

Use PROC BOXPLOT to display hundreds of box plots

A previous article shows how to use a scatter plot to visualize the average SAT scores for all high schools in North Carolina. The schools are grouped by school districts and ranked according to the median value of the schools in the district. For the school districts that have many

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Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Leonid BatkhanMarch 5, 2019 0

How to conditionally terminate a SAS batch flow process in UNIX/Linux

In automated production (or business operations) environments, we often run SAS job flows in batch mode and on schedule. SAS job flow is a collection of several inter-dependent SAS programs executed as a single process. In my earlier posts, Running SAS programs in batch under Unix/Linux and Let SAS write

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Learn SAS

Shelley Sessoms

Shelley SessomsFebruary 27, 2019 0

We’re moving on: SAS Learning Post has merged with SAS Users

The SAS Learning post has merged with the SAS Users blog to provide you with all the training, certification, books, events, and programming tips you need.

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Data Visualization | Learn SAS

Scott HicksFebruary 27, 2019 0

Using Custom Coordinates for map creation in SAS Visual Analytics

In this post, we continue our discussion of geography variables, the foundation of Visual Analytics Geo maps. This time we will look at Custom Coordinates. As with any statistical graph, understanding your data is key. But when using Custom Coordinates for geographic maps, this understanding becomes even more important. Use

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Data Visualization | Learn SAS

Rick WicklinFebruary 27, 2019 0

3 ways to create nested box plots in SAS

Box plots are a great way to compare the distributions of several subpopulations of your data. For example, box plots are often used in clinical studies to visualize the response of patients in various cohorts. This article describes three techniques to visualize responses when the cohorts have a nested or

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Analytics | Data Visualization | Learn SAS

Rick WicklinFebruary 25, 2019 0

Graphs of bootstrap statistics in PROC TTEST

When I run a bootstrap analysis, I create graphs to visualize the distribution of the bootstrap statistics. For example, in my article about how to bootstrap the difference of means in a two-sample t test, I included a histogram of the bootstrap distribution and added reference lines to indicate a

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Learn SAS

Samantha Biswas

Samantha BiswasFebruary 22, 2019 0

Thinking about getting SAS® certified? Check out the new SAS certification guide!

Find out about the new SAS Certified Specialist credential, and all the ways you can prepare for it.

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Data Visualization | Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Martin MinceyFebruary 15, 2019 0

Embed scalable graphics using the ODS HTML5 destination

Beginning with SAS® 9.4, you can embed graphics output within HTML output using the ODS HTML5 destination. This technique works with SAS/GRAPH® procedures (such as GPLOT and GCHART), SG procedures (such as SGPLOT and SGRENDER), and when you create graphics output with ODS Graphics enabled. Most (if not all) existing

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Learn SAS

Mark StevensFebruary 13, 2019 0

New Performance-Based Certification: Write SAS Code During Your Exam

SAS has worked with our exam delivery partners to integrate a live lab into an exam, which can be delivered anywhere, anytime, on-demand.

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