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Programming Tips

Strengthen your programming skills with tips and techniques from the experts

Data Visualization | Programming Tips

Robert AllisonMarch 30, 2020 0

Tracking Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) in the US at the state/county level

Now that COVID-19 is spreading in the US, I thought it might be helpful to view the data at a more granular level. Follow along as I plot the county data on a map and discuss how the color-binning can influence people's perception of the data. Maps like this can

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Programming Tips

Chris HemedingerMarch 23, 2020 0

Tricks for importing text files in SAS Enterprise Guide

I'm a big fan of the Import Data task in SAS Enterprise Guide, especially for its support of text-based files (CSV, tab delimited, fixed width, and more). There's no faster method for generating SAS code that reads your data exactly the way you need it. I use the tool so

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Programming Tips

Martin MinceyMarch 20, 2020 0

How to debug 5 common SAS® software font issues

Martin Mincey of SAS Technical Support shows you how to debug when listing registered SAS fonts, registering new fonts, getting SAS SG procedures to use a new font and more.

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Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Suzanne MorgenMarch 19, 2020 0

Free e-book: SAS Programming for R Users

At SAS Press, we agree with the saying “The best things in life are free.” And one of the best things in life is knowledge. That’s why we offer free e-books to help you learn SAS or improve your skills. In this blog post, we will introduce you to one

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Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Rick WicklinMarch 18, 2020 0

Print SAS/IML variables with formats

A SAS/IML programmer asked about the best way to print multiple SAS/IML variables when each variable needs a different format. He wanted the output to resemble the "Parameter Estimates" table that is produced by PROC REG and other SAS/STAT procedures. This article shows four ways to print SAS/IML vectors in

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Programming Tips

Daria Rostovtseva

Daria RostovtsevaMarch 16, 2020 0

Challenge accepted: Learning data prep in CASL

As a long-time SAS 9 programmer, I typically accomplish my data preparation tasks through some combination of the DATA Step, Proc SQL, Proc Transpose and some housekeeping procs like Proc Contents and Proc Datasets. With the introduction of SAS Viya, SAS released a new scripting language called CASL – a

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Analytics | Programming Tips

Rick WicklinMarch 16, 2020 0

Predict a random integer: The tradeoff between bias and variance

Books about statistics and machine learning often discuss the tradeoff between bias and variance for an estimator. These discussions are often motivated by a sophisticated predictive model such as a regression or a decision tree. But the basic idea can be seen in much simpler situations. This article presents a

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Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Leonid BatkhanMarch 10, 2020 0

Automating SAS variable labels creation

SAS' Leonid Batkhan shows you how to automate creation of SAS variable labels so tables and reports are easier to read.

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Programming Tips

Susan SlaughterMarch 10, 2020 0

Accessing Excel files using LIBNAME XLSX

If you have been using SAS for long, you have probably noticed that there is generally more than one way to do anything. (For an example, see my co-author Lora Delwiche’s blog about PROC SQL.) The Little SAS Book has long covered reading and writing Microsoft Excel files with the

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Advanced Analytics | Data Visualization | Programming Tips

Rick WicklinMarch 9, 2020 0

ROC curves for a binormal sample

In a previous article, I discussed the binormal model for a binary classification problem. This model assumes a set of scores that are normally distributed for each population, and the mean of the scores for the Negative population is less than the mean of scores for the Positive population. I

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Advanced Analytics | Learn SAS | Machine Learning | Programming Tips

Suzanne MorgenMarch 5, 2020 0

Learn about new data mining and machine learning procedures in SAS Viya

Have you heard that SAS offers a collection of new, high-performance CAS procedures that are compatible with a multi-threaded approach? The free e-book Exploring SAS® Viya®: Data Mining and Machine Learning is a great resource to learn more about these procedures and the features of SAS® Visual Data Mining and

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Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Rick WicklinMarch 4, 2020 0

Store pre-computed matrices in a list

Suppose that a data set contains a set of parameter values. For each row of parameters, you need to perform some computation. A recent discussion on the SAS Support Communities mentions an important point: if there are duplicate rows in the data, a program might repeat the same computation several

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Programming Tips

Chris HemedingerFebruary 27, 2020 0

Viewing SAS macro variables in SAS Enterprise Guide

If you use SAS macro variables in your programs (who doesn't?), then the SAS Macro Variable viewer is immensely useful to see current macro var values.

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Data Visualization | Programming Tips

Robert AllisonFebruary 26, 2020 0

How long does it take to paddle a canoe 100 miles?

I'm a bit of a boat paddling enthusiast, as you might have guessed from some of my previous paddling blog posts. The amount of exertion in race-paddling is similar to running - the longest race I've paddled in a race so far was 13 miles (half-marathon distance). But in the

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Sports & Entertainment

Analytics | Programming Tips

Suzanne MorgenFebruary 26, 2020 0

Propensity Score Estimation with PROC PSMATCH and PROC LOGISTIC

Do you wish you could predict the likelihood that one of your customers will open your marketing email? Or what if you could tell whether a new medical treatment for a patient will have a better outcome than the standard treatment? If you are familiar with propensity modeling, then you

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Communications | Education | Health Care | Life Sciences | Retail

Data Visualization | Programming Tips

Debpriya Sarkar

Debpriya SarkarFebruary 24, 2020 0

Ridgeline Plots using SGPLOT

Ridgeline plots are useful for visualizing changes in the shapes of distribution over multiple groups or time periods. Let us look at an example of how we can create this plot using the SGPLOT procedure that is part of the ODS Graphics Procedures. For this example, we will plot the

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Data Management | Programming Tips

Mary Kathryn QueenFebruary 24, 2020 0

How to use Suggestions in SAS® Data Studio

SAS Technical Training Consultant Mary Kathryn Queen introduces you to SAS Data Studio's Suggestions feature.

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Programming Tips

Rick WicklinFebruary 24, 2020 0

Visualization of a binary classification analysis

The purpose of this article is to show how to use SAS to create a graph that illustrates a basic idea in a binary classification analysis, such as discriminant analysis and logistic regression. The graph, shown at right, shows two populations. Subjects in the "negative" population do not have some

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Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Rick WicklinFebruary 19, 2020 0

A list of SAS DATA step functions that do not run in CAS

Are you a statistical programmer whose company has adopted SAS Viya? If so, you probably know that the DATA step can run in parallel in SAS Cloud Analytic Services (CAS). As Sekosky (2017) says, "running in a single thread in SAS is different from running in many threads in CAS."

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Programming Tips

Lora D. DelwicheFebruary 18, 2020 0

Test your SAS skills with the newest edition of Exercises and Projects for The Little SAS Book

In case you missed the news, there is a new edition of The Little SAS Book! Last fall, we completed the sixth edition of our book, and even though it is actually a few pages shorter than the fifth edition, we managed to add many more topics to the book.

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Programming Tips

Suzanne MorgenFebruary 14, 2020 0

Learn to Love SAS LIKE

In honor of Valentine’s day, we thought it would be fitting to present an excerpt from a paper about the LIKE operator because when you like something a lot, it may lead to love! If you want more, you can read the full paper “Like, Learn to Love SAS® Like”

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Data Visualization | Programming Tips

Robert AllisonFebruary 13, 2020 0

Giving your maps more visual impact!

There are many ways to add more "visual impact" to your maps. Some techniques grab the users' attention, but often don't add anything useful to the message the map is trying to convey (such as 3D tricks, or flashy/gratuitous images and infographics). I encourage you to design maps that have

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Energy & Utilities

Analytics | Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Rick WicklinFebruary 12, 2020 0

The Johnson system: Which distribution should you choose to model data?

The Johnson system (Johnson, 1949) contains a family of four distributions: the normal distribution, the lognormal distribution, the SB distribution, and the SU distribution. Previous articles explain why the Johnson system is useful and show how to use PROC UNIVARIATE in SAS to estimate parameters for the Johnson SB distribution

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Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Rick WicklinFebruary 10, 2020 0

Find the fractional part of a number

You can represent every number as a nearby integer plus a decimal. For example, 1.3 = 1 + 0.3. The integer is called the integer part of x, whereas the decimal is called the fractional part of x (or sometimes the decimal part of x). This representation is not unique.

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Programming Tips

Ron CodyFebruary 5, 2020 0

Finding Possible Data Errors Using the %Auto_Outliers Macro

One of the first and most important steps in analyzing data, whether for descriptive or inferential statistical tasks, is to check for possible errors in your data. In my book, Cody's Data Cleaning Techniques Using SAS, Third Edition, I describe a macro called %Auto_Outliers. This macro allows you to search

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Programming Tips

Rick WicklinFebruary 3, 2020 0

What sample size do you need for a binomial test of proportions?

Recently someone on social media asked, "how can I compute the required sample size for a binomial test?" I assume from the question that the researcher was designing an experiment to test the proportions between two groups, such as a control group and a treatment/intervention group. They wanted to know

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Data Visualization | Programming Tips

Robert AllisonJanuary 31, 2020 0

Magnetic north moved 50 miles last year (let's map it!)

I've read several articles that mentioned the north magnetic pole has been moving more in the past few decades, than in the previous few hundred years. And as a Map Guy, I knew I just had to plot this data on a map, and see it for myself! I provide

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Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Leonid BatkhanJanuary 27, 2020 0

Shifting a date by a given number of workdays

This blog post demonstrates process and SAS coding techniques to shift dates by a given number of workdays accounting for weekends and holidays.

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Analytics | Data Visualization | Programming Tips

Rick WicklinJanuary 27, 2020 0

The Johnson SU distribution

The Johnson system (Johnson, 1949) contains a family of four distributions: the normal distribution, the lognormal distribution, the SB distribution (which models bounded distributions), and the SU distribution (which models unbounded distributions). Note that 'B' stands for 'bounded' and 'U' stands for 'unbounded.' A previous article explains the purpose of

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Data for Good | Data Visualization | Programming Tips

Robert AllisonJanuary 24, 2020 0

Creating a map to track the coronavirus

The coronavirus has been a big item in the news lately - it's a pneumonia-like illness that has killed several people. It's thought to have started in China, and has spread to several other countries (including at least one case in the U.S.). The World Health Organization says the coronavirus

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