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Programming Tips

Strengthen your programming skills with tips and techniques from the experts

Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Rick WicklinMay 19, 2025 0

Calculate the Gini-Simpson diversity index in SAS

An article by David Corliss in Amstat News (Corliss D. (2025) "Quantifying Diversity: Calculating the Gini-Simpson Diversity Index") discusses a new statistical measure of diversity that was adopted by the US Census Bureau. The statistic is called the Gini-Simpson diversity index. The Census Bureau has published an article about how

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Programming Tips

Lizzie MabeMay 16, 2025 0

Essential VS Code shortcuts every Python developer should know

This guide shares the top keyboard shortcuts to boost productivity in VSCode, especially when using SAS Viya Workbench with Python or SAS notebooks. It includes built-in commands for navigating and editing notebooks, plus instructions for creating custom shortcuts tailored to your coding workflow.

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Programming Tips | SAS Administrators | SAS Events

Chris Hemedinger

Chris HemedingerMay 13, 2025 0

What's next for SAS 9 and SAS Enterprise Guide?

SAS announces continued support and releases for SAS 9 and a new role for SAS Enterprise Guide with SAS Viya.

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Learn SAS | Machine Learning | Programming Tips

Rick WicklinApril 28, 2025 0

The SMOTE method for generating synthetic data

The Synthetic Minority Over-sampling Technique (SMOTE) was created to address class-imbalance problems in machine learning algorithms. The idea is to oversample from the rare events prior to running a machine learning classification algorithm. However, at its heart, the SMOTE algorithm (Chawla et al., 2002) is essentially a way to simulate

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Analytics | Data Visualization | Programming Tips

Rick WicklinApril 21, 2025 0

Updating old SAS programs: A case study with PROC LOESS

SAS programmers love to brag that the SAS will still run a program they wrote twenty or forty years. This is both a blessing and a curse. It's a blessing because it frees the statistical programmer from needing to revisit and rewrite code that was written long ago. It's a

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Analytics | Programming Tips

Rick WicklinApril 14, 2025 0

Newton's minimization method

Isaac Newton had many amazing scientific and mathematical accomplishments. His law of universal gravitation and his creation of calculus are at the top of the list! But in the field of numerical analysis, "Newton's Method" was a groundbreaking advancement for solving for a root of a nonlinear smooth function. The

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Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Rick WicklinApril 8, 2025 0

The Golden Section minimization method

Newton's method was in the news this week. Not the well-known linear method for finding roots, but a more complicated method for finding minima, sometimes called the method of successive parabolic approximations. Newton's parabolic method was recently improved by modern researchers who extended the method to use higher-dimensional polynomials. The

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Cloud | Programming Tips

Sean FordApril 4, 2025 0

Integrate Git repositories via SSH

I’ve worked on many different types of systems, platforms, operating systems, and hardware over the years. For software development, one aspect that has remained fairly consistent is the use of Git. Knowing some of the basic, no-nonsense approaches of working with Git has proven extremely valuable, as these approaches tend

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Data Visualization | Programming Tips

Rick WicklinMarch 31, 2025 0

Nested bar charts in SAS

After giving a talk about how to create effective statistical graphics in SAS, I was asked a question: "When do you suggest using the graph template language (GTL) to build graphs?" I replied that I turn to the GTL when I cannot create the graph I want by using PROC

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Analytics | Data Visualization | Programming Tips

Rick WicklinMarch 24, 2025 0

The quantile fit plot: Comparing empirical and predicted quantiles for a univariate model

A common task in statistics is to model data by using a parametric probability distribution, such as the normal, lognormal, beta, or gamma distributions. There are many ways to assess how well the model fits the data, including graphical methods such as a Q-Q plot and formal statistical tests such

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Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Rick WicklinMarch 17, 2025 0

Find the location of a run-time error in a user-defined function in SAS

Every programmer makes errors. Therefore, learning to debug a program is an important part of learning to program. Another skill is learning to decipher cryptic error messages, which can be as hard to interpret as hieroglyphs. One helpful skill is learning to navigate a "traceback" error. A traceback error message

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Data Management | Programming Tips

Stu SztukowskiMarch 14, 2025 0

How to create and manage Python Virtual Environments

Wouldn’t it be great if we could create a Python environment with only the packages and versions we need? Enter: virtual environments.

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Analytics | Programming Tips

Rick WicklinMarch 10, 2025 0

Pi to the power of pi

Happy Pi Day! Every year on March 14th (written 3/14 in the US), people in the mathematical sciences celebrate "all things pi-related" because 3.14 is the three-decimal approximation to π ≈ 3.14159265358979.... The purpose of this day is to have fun, celebrate the importance of mathematics, and maybe learn a

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Programming Tips

Sean FordMarch 7, 2025 0

Install VS Code extensions offline: step-by-step guide

This article provides a step-by-step guide on manually installing VS Code extensions when access to the online marketplace is restricted, including downloading .vsix files from GitHub and handling dependencies.

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Analytics | Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Rick WicklinMarch 3, 2025 0

An explicit formula for eigenvalues of an AR(1) correlation matrix

The first-order autoregressive (AR(1)) correlation structure is important for applications in time series modeling and for repeated measures analysis. The AR(1) model provides a simple situations where measurements (on the same subject) that are closer in time are correlated more strongly than measurements recorded far apart. The AR(1) model uses

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Programming Tips

Simon ToppFebruary 28, 2025 0

SAS Container Runtime Testbench: A field developed tool for SAS Intelligent Decisioning

SAS' Simon Topp walks you through how to setup SAS Container Runtime Testbench to make operating and debugging your SAS Intelligent Decisioning decisions a breeze

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Analytics | Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Rick WicklinFebruary 17, 2025 0

Deviance residuals and the DEVIANCE function in SAS

Many people have an intuitive feel for residuals in least square models and know that the sum of squared residuals is a goodness-of-fit measure. Generalized linear regression models use a different but related idea, called deviance residuals. What are deviance residuals, and how can you compute them? Deviance residuals (and

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Advanced Analytics | Analytics | Artificial Intelligence | Programming Tips

Elizabeth Bautista

Elizabeth BautistaFebruary 14, 2025 0

¡Hablemos del amor en el lenguaje de programación en SAS Viya Workbench!

En el nuevo ambiente analítico bajo demanda, SAS Viya Workbench conduce directamente al aumento de la productividad, rendimiento y confianza entre los desarrolladores de la Inteligencia Artificial. Como uno de los recientes lanzamientos de SAS, Viya Workbench este es un ambiente de cómputo que fue pensado para desarrolladores y modeladores

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Analytics | Programming Tips

Melodie RushFebruary 11, 2025 0

Getting Started with Python Integration to SAS Viya for Predictive Modeling - Fitting a Support Vector Machine (SVM) Model

Fitting a Support Vector Machine (SVM) Model - Learn how to fit a support vector machine model and use your model to score new data In Part 6, Part 7, Part 9, Part 10, and Part 11 of this series, we fit a logistic regression, decision tree, random forest, gradient

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Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Rick WicklinFebruary 10, 2025 0

Find inflection points for a function that is known only at discrete points

A previous article describes how to use SAS to find the inflection points of a 1-D function that you can evaluate at any point. The function must be given by a formula (or by an algorithm) because the root-finding algorithm needs to evaluate the function at arbitrary locations. However, sometimes

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Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Rick WicklinFebruary 5, 2025 0

Find an inflection point for a function numerically

A SAS programmer asked if it is possible to numerically find an inflection point for a univariate function, f(x). Yes! This can be solved as a variation of a classic numerical root-finding problem. Recall that an inflection point is a value (call it x0) in the domain where the graph

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Analytics | Programming Tips

Rick WicklinFebruary 3, 2025 0

Use the Lambert W function to solve equations that involve exponential functions

I previously wrote an article about the Lambert W function. The Lambert W function is the inverse of the function g(x) = x exp(x). This means that you can use it to find the value of x such that g(x)=c for any value of c in the range of g, which

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Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Rick WicklinJanuary 27, 2025 0

Find the real roots of polynomials in SAS

A SAS programmer had many polynomials for which he wanted to compute the real roots. By the Fundamental Theorem of Algebra, every polynomial of degree d has d complex roots. You can find these complex roots by using the POLYROOT function in SAS IML. The programmer only wanted to output

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Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Rick WicklinJanuary 22, 2025 0

SAS tip: Use the hyphen and colon operators to specify multiple data sets on the SET statement

Here's a SAS tip for you. Most SAS programmers know that SAS provides syntax that makes it easy to specify a list of variables. For example, you can use the hyphen and colon operators to specify lists of variables on many SAS statements: You can use the hyphen operator (-)

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Analytics | Programming Tips

Melodie RushJanuary 14, 2025 0

Getting Started with Python Integration to SAS Viya for Predictive Modeling - Fitting a Neural Network Model

Fitting a Neural Network Model - Learn how to fit a neural network model and use your model to score new data In Part 6, Part 7, Part 9, and Part 10 of this series, we fit a logistic regression, decision tree, random forest and gradient boosting model to the

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Analytics | Data Visualization | Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Rick WicklinJanuary 13, 2025 0

12 blog posts from 2024 that deserve a second look

In a previous article, I presented some of the most popular blog posts from The DO Loop in 2024. In general, popular articles deal with elementary topics that have broad appeal. However, I also write technical articles about advanced topics, which typically do not make it onto a Top 10

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Data Visualization | Programming Tips

Danny Sprukulis

Danny SprukulisJanuary 10, 2025 0

Utilizing SAS Viya’s Geocoding capabilities for multiple data configurations and languages

SAS' Danny Sprukulis takes you step-by-step through geocoding incomplete geographic data sources for proper visualization and through its additional capabilities.

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Analytics | Data Visualization | Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Rick WicklinJanuary 6, 2025 0

Top 10 posts from The DO Loop in 2024

In 2024, I wrote about 80 articles for The DO Loop blog. My most popular articles were about SAS programming, data visualization, and statistics. If you missed any of these articles, here is the "Reader's Choice Awards" for some of the most popular articles from 2024! SAS Programming The following

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Advanced Analytics | Programming Tips

Danny Sprukulis

Danny SprukulisDecember 20, 2024 0

Simulating theme park wait times within SAS Viya, creating a live solution for hospitality operations

SAS' Danny Sprukulis walks through how he developed a model theme park to simulate attraction wait times for operational decision-making.

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Analytics | Programming Tips

Rick WicklinDecember 18, 2024 0

Generate correlation matrices with specified eigenvalues

A previous article discusses how to generate a random covariance matrix with a specified set of (positive) eigenvalues. A SAS programmer asked whether it is possible to produce a correlation matrix that has a specified set of eigenvalues. After discussing the problem with a friend, I am happy to report

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