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Learn SAS

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Data Visualization | Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Leonid BatkhanJune 6, 2014 0

Spice up SAS output with live Google maps

➤ DISCLOSURE! In June 2018 Google introduced changes to the way it handles its Maps platform. They now require API key in order to embed a map, plus Google Maps "projects" must now be associated with a billing account. Unless these new Google rules are met, Google maps described in

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Rick WicklinJune 2, 2014 0

Specify formats when you write vectors to a data set

Sometimes you have data in SAS/IML vectors that you need to write to a SAS data set. By default, no formats are associated with the variables that you create from SAS/IML vectors. However, some variables (notably dates, times, and datetimes) should have formats associated with the data values. You can

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Rick WicklinMay 27, 2014 0

An easy way to generate a vector of letters

A little-known but useful feature of SAS/IML 12.3 (which was released with SAS 9.4) is the ability to generate a vector of lowercase or uppercase letters by using the colon operator (:). Many SAS/IML programmers use the colon operator to generate a vector of sequential integers: proc iml; x =

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Rick WicklinMay 14, 2014 0

Tips for concatenating strings in SAS/IML

Last week, as part of an article on how spammers generate comments for blogs, I showed how to generate random messages by using the CATX function in the DATA step. In that example, the strings were scalar quantities, but you can also concatenate vectors of strings in the SAS/IML language.

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Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Maggie MillerMay 12, 2014 0

SAS tutorial: Create simple scatter plots with two variables using SAS

This SAS tutorial video will show you how to generate plots for two continuous numeric variables with Base SAS. Basic scatter plots, linear or curvilinear regression lines, confidence intervals or ellipses, and multiple plot overlays are demonstrated. To learn more about this topic, check out our SAS Programming 1: Essentials

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Advanced Analytics | Learn SAS

Rick WicklinMay 5, 2014 0

Blanks and lengths: Understanding SAS/IML character vectors

SAS programmers are probably familiar with how SAS stores a character variable in a data set, but how is a character vector stored in the SAS/IML language? Recall that a character variable is stored by using a fixed-width storage structure. In the SAS DATA step, the maximum number of characters

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Learn SAS | Programming Tips | SAS Administrators

Leonid BatkhanMay 1, 2014 0

Autoexecs—the SAS Enterprise Guide advantage

As I was preparing for a customer introduction to using SAS Enterprise Guide, I asked them to send me all the questions they had regarding the Enterprise Guide usage. It turned out that many of their questions can be answered with a single feature called an autoexec, or automatically executable

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Rick WicklinApril 14, 2014 0

Summary of new features in SAS/IML 12.1

I enjoy blogging about new functionality in the SAS/IML language because I can go into more depth and provide more complicated examples than the SAS/IML documentation. Today's article is a summary of all of my posts about features that were added to SAS/IML 12.1, which shipped in August 2012 as

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Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Maggie MillerApril 10, 2014 0

SAS tutorial: Print a simple listing with SAS

In this tutorial video, you will learn to print a simple listing with Base SAS. You see how to write a PRINT procedure step to display a SAS data set. You also see how to use statements and options to subset observations and variables and enhance the report. Learn

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Rick WicklinApril 9, 2014 0

The Hilbert matrix: A vectorized construction

The Hilbert matrix is the most famous ill-conditioned matrix in numerical linear algebra. It is often used in matrix computations to illustrate problems that arise when you compute with ill-conditioned matrices. The Hilbert matrix is symmetric and positive definite, properties that are often associated with "nice" and "tame" matrices. The

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Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Maggie MillerApril 3, 2014 0

SAS tutorial: Creating a new variable in SAS

This SAS tutorial video will show you how to create a new variable with Base SAS. During the step-by-step video, you will see exactly how to create and modify numeric and character variables using assignment statements in a DATA step. Watch and learn… To learn more about the steps in

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Rick WicklinMarch 31, 2014 0

SAS/IML available to all students through SAS Analytics U

When spontaneous applause broke out during Dr. Jim Goodnight's presentation at the opening session of SAS Global Forum 2014, I was one of the people cheering the loudest. The SAS CEO had just announced free software for students and professors at universities around the world. The SAS University Edition will

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SAS Statistics by Example

Shelly GoodinMarch 27, 2014 0

SAS author's tip: Displaying multiple box plots for each value of a categorical variable

This week's SAS tip is from superstar author Ron Cody and his very popular book SAS Statistics by Example. Ron has been using SAS (and writing about SAS) for a long time. And he communicates his vast expertise in a friendly, easy-to-understand manner. If you've used any of Ron's books, I'm sure you'll agree. The following

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Learn SAS | Programming Tips | Students & Educators

Nadja YoungMarch 27, 2014 0

Calling all High School STEM educators! Teach Your Students 21st Century Computer Science Skills

STEM skills are essential for many of the fastest-growing and most lucrative occupations. And SAS programmers are in high demand in all fields. A number of reports have documented a critical talent shortage, especially for graduates with advanced degrees in math, computer science or computer engineering. (See Running on Empty, Report to

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Education | Government

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Maggie MillerMarch 27, 2014 0

SAS tutorials: Filter and sort data in SAS

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

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Advanced Analytics | Learn SAS

Rick WicklinMarch 17, 2014 0

Finding elements in one vector that are not in another vector

The SAS/IML language has several functions for finding the unions, intersections, and differences between sets. In fact, two of my favorite utility functions are the UNIQUE function, which returns the unique elements in a matrix, and the SETDIF function, which returns the elements that are in one vector and not

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Rick WicklinMarch 10, 2014 0

How to get started with SAS: Free videos for beginners

On most Mondays I blog about a function, programming technique, or resource that is useful for programmers who are getting started with SAS software. Recently I learned that my colleagues in the SAS education division have been hard at work developing a series of short videos that explain basic tasks

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Rick WicklinMarch 3, 2014 0

Aborting a SAS/IML program upon encountering an error

A colleague sent me an interesting question: What is the best way to abort a SAS/IML program? For example, you might want to abort a program if the data is singular or does not contain a sufficient number of observations or variables. As a first attempt would be to try

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Advanced Analytics | Learn SAS

Rick WicklinFebruary 19, 2014 0

Techniques for scoring a regression model in SAS

My previous post described how to use the "missing response trick" to score a regression model. As I said in that article, there are other ways to score a regression model. This article describes using the SCORE procedure, a SCORE statement, the relatively new PLM procedure, and the CODE statement.

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Advanced Analytics | Learn SAS

Rick WicklinFebruary 17, 2014 0

The missing value trick for scoring a regression model

A fundamental operation in statistical data analysis is to fit a statistical regression model on one set of data and then evaluate the model on another set of data. The act of evaluating the model on the second set of data is called scoring. One of first "tricks" that I

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Rick WicklinFebruary 10, 2014 0

Define functions with default parameter values in SAS/IML

One of my favorite new features of SAS/IML 12.1 enables you to define functions that contain default values for parameters. This is extremely useful when you want to write a function that has optional arguments. Example: Centering a data vector It is simple to specify a SAS/IML module with a

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Shelly GoodinJanuary 24, 2014 0

SAS author's tip: Planning versus forecasting and manual overrides

This week's SAS tip is from Applied Data Mining for Forecasting Using SAS by Tim Rey, Arthur Kordon, and Chip Wells. Whether you're a forecasting practitioner, engineer, statistician, or economist, you'll appreciate the many real-world examples in the book. And hopefully this free excerpt. The following excerpt is from SAS Press

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Ruth Dobson-TorresJanuary 23, 2014 0

Could SAS programming be in your future?

Even though I’ve worked as software technology marketer over the years, I have to admit that on a personal level I’ve probably related more to TV programming than software programming. When it comes to writing, I’ve always gravitated more toward crafting marketing communications than code. And when it comes to

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Rick WicklinJanuary 13, 2014 0

How to vectorize time series computations

Vector languages such as SAS/IML, MATLAB, and R are powerful because they enable you to use high-level matrix operations (matrix multiplication, dot products, etc) rather than loops that perform scalar operations. In general, vectorized programs are more efficient (and therefore run faster) than programs that contain loops. For an example

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Cynthia ZenderJanuary 7, 2014 0

What to do when a table’s not enough?

Sure, you have a great looking table and you produce it with PROC TABULATE. And then, bam! Your boss comes along and decides that since your output looks so good in Word, that he’d like that boilerplate paragraph inserted automatically. Currently, you produce the tables and then pass the RTF

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Rick WicklinDecember 16, 2013 0

How to coerce SAS/IML vectors to matrices

Recently a SAS/IML programmer asked a question regarding how to perform matrix arithmetic when some of the data are in vectors and other are in matrices. The programmer wanted to add the following matrices: The problem was that the numbers in the first two matrices were stored in vectors. The

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Rick WicklinDecember 9, 2013 0

Interpreting PROC IML error messages: Matrices do not conform to the operation

When learning a new language, it is important to learn to interpret error messages that come from the language's parser or compiler. Three years ago I blogged about how to interpret SAS/IML error messages. However, many questions have been posted to the SAS/IML Support Community that indicate that some people

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Catherine (Cat) Truxillo

Catherine (Cat) TruxilloDecember 2, 2013 0

Two Ways to Handle Baselines in Catnip-Crazed Kitties

“Dear Cat, In a repeated measures drug study, I am unsure what to do with the baseline measurement. Since it is one of the time points in my study, I feel like I should use it as one of the dependent variable measurements. But I have seen analyses where baseline

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Rick WicklinDecember 2, 2013 0

Write a matrix in the "long form"

If you write an n x p matrix from PROC IML to a SAS data set, you'll get a data set with n rows and p columns. For some applications, it is more convenient to write the matrix in a "long format" with np observations and three columns. The first

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Rick WicklinNovember 18, 2013 0

Vectorizing the construction of a structured matrix

In using a vector-matrix language such as SAS/IML, MATLAB, or R, one of the challenges for programmers is learning how to vectorize computations. Often it is not intuitive how to program a computation so that you avoid looping over the rows and columns of a matrix. However, there are a

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