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Programming Tips

Strengthen your programming skills with tips and techniques from the experts

Data Visualization | Programming Tips

Robert AllisonJune 16, 2021 0

Don't let bad graphs undermine your credibility...

Having earned the Eagle Scout rank in Boy Scouts, I am of course very conservation-minded, and against polluting. I'm also an avid boat paddler and fisherman, and therefore I'm especially concerned about pollution in our rivers, lakes, and oceans. I even volunteered for a week to help survey coral reefs

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Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Leonid BatkhanJune 14, 2021 0

Using SYSTASK and SAS macro loops for massively parallel processing

SAS' Leonid Batkhan presents an implementation of parallel processing by spawning multiple SAS sessions using SYSTASK statements with subsequent synchronization.

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Analytics | Programming Tips

Rick WicklinJune 14, 2021 0

Simulate correlated variables by using the Iman-Conover transformation

Simulating univariate data is relatively easy. Simulating multivariate data is much harder. The main difficulty is to generate variables that have given univariate distributions but also are correlated with each other according to a specified correlation matrix. However, Iman and Conover (1982, "A distribution-free approach to inducing rank correlation among

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Data Visualization | Programming Tips

Robert AllisonJune 9, 2021 0

SEVENTY48: Seventy miles, in 48 hours

I've got this buddy, Carter Johnson - he's a little bit crazy, but a lot of fun to follow... He holds/held several different long-distance paddling world records, and was one of the coaches for the group that paddled kayaks from Cuba to the US (see my blog post). A few

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Sports & Entertainment

Analytics | Programming Tips

Rick WicklinJune 7, 2021 0

Permutation tests and independent sorting of data

For many univariate statistics (mean, median, standard deviation, etc.), the order of the data is unimportant. If you sort univariate data, the mean and standard deviation do not change. However, you cannot sort an individual variable (independently) if you want to preserve its relationship with other variables. This statement is

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Data Visualization | Programming Tips

Robert AllisonJune 2, 2021 0

Improving a population pyramid animation (Sweden, 1860-2020)

You've probably seen a population pyramid, such as this one I showed in a previous blog post. But let's scrutinize population pyramids a bit deeper, with an eye on special features that can make them even more useful! I was inspired to give population trees a second look by this

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Analytics | Programming Tips

Rick WicklinJune 1, 2021 0

The Hampel identifier: Robust outlier detection in a time series

It is well known that classical estimates of location and scale (for example, the mean and standard deviation) are influenced by outliers. In the 1960s, '70s, and '80s, researchers such as Tukey, Huber, Hampel, and Rousseeuw advocated analyzing data by using robust statistical estimates such as the median and the

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Analytics | Programming Tips

Rick WicklinMay 26, 2021 0

The running median as a time series smoother

When data contain outliers, medians estimate the center of the data better than means do. In general, robust estimates of location and sale are preferred over classical moment-based estimates when the data contain outliers or are from a heavy-tailed distribution. Thus, instead of using the mean and standard deviation of

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Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Ron CodyMay 25, 2021 0

Reordering rows and columns in a 2x2 table with SAS® Studio Tasks

In SAS Studio, the ordering of rows and columns in the Table Analysis task are, by default, arranged by the internal ordering of the values used in the table. The table arranges the variables alphabetically or numerically by increasing value. For example, traditional coding uses 1 for Yes and 0

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Data Visualization | Programming Tips

Robert AllisonMay 20, 2021 0

Myth busting: Maine is closest US state to Africa?

In a discussion on a Reddit map group, someone claimed "Maine is the US state closest to Africa." Is that true? Can I use my SAS mapping tools to confirm, or bust, this myth? Follow along, as I dive in! ... The Map in my Head (Wrong!) My gut instincts

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Cloud | Programming Tips | SAS Administrators

Tara St. ClairMay 20, 2021 0

SAS Viya on Kubernetes with Azure Active Directory: Group-based access to Azure File Shares

In my previous post, Group-based access to Azure Files in the new SAS Viya, I walked through an example of making one or more Azure File Shares available to SAS Viya end user sessions with a group-based access pattern. This post extends the scenario and covers the case where we

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Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Rick WicklinMay 19, 2021 0

Implement a product function in SAS

A SAS programmer noticed that there is not a built-in function in the SAS DATA step that computes the product for each row across a specified set of variables. There are built-in functions for various statistics such as the SUM, MAX, MIN, MEAN, and MEDIAN functions. But no DATA step

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Data Visualization | Programming Tips

Robert AllisonMay 14, 2021 0

Mapping the Colonial Pipeline

Here in the US, the pipeline which supplies gasoline to North Caroline (and much of the southeast) was hacked, and had to be shut down for several days. This caused gasoline shortages, and long lines at the gas pumps (as shown in the picture below, by my friend Daniel). But

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Data Visualization | Programming Tips

Robert AllisonMay 13, 2021 0

Moose Flats - the Russian nesting doll of lakes

Lake Superior is the largest freshwater lake (by surface area) in the world. And its largest island is Isle Royale. And its largest lake is Lake Siskiwit. And its largest island is Ryan Island. Ryan Island's largest (seasonal) pond is called Moose Flats. And it contains an 'island' (or a

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Analytics | Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Rick WicklinMay 12, 2021 0

Nonstandard ways to standardize variables

You can standardize a numerical variable by subtracting a location parameter from each observation and then dividing by a scale parameter. Often, the parameters depend on the data that you are standardizing. For example, the most common way to standardize a variable is to subtract the sample mean and divide

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Programming Tips | SAS Events

Dina DuhonMay 11, 2021 0

SAS Global Forum: Your experience, your way

It’s safe to say that SAS Global Forum is a conference designed for users, by users. As your conference chair, I am excited by this year’s top-notch user sessions. More than 150 sessions are available, many by SAS users just like you. Wherever you work or whatever you do, you’ll

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Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Rick WicklinMay 10, 2021 0

Odani's truism for fractions that are near each other

Odani's truism is a mathematical result that says that if you want to compare the fractions a/b and c/d, it often is sufficient to compare the sums (a+d) and (b+c) rather than the products a*d and b*c. (All of the integers a, b, c, and d are positive.) If you

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Data for Good | Data Visualization | Programming Tips

Robert AllisonMay 7, 2021 0

Creating a paraquat (weed killer) map

I think one of the great uses of analytics and graphics is to show things like cancer clusters on a map. There are many factors that can lead to a higher incidence of diseases in geographical areas, and chemicals are often the culprit. For example, paraquat has been potentially linked

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Programming Tips

Ursula PoloMay 5, 2021 0

Tips for Scheduling Flows with SAS Viya Environment Manager

Set it and forget it. That’s how SAS Viya Jobs and Flows should work, right? Well, just like most other things in life, it’s not that simple. What if you have multiple Jobs set to run in a Flow and one fails? Do you exit the process or continue with

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Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Rick WicklinMay 5, 2021 0

Odani's truism: A probabilistic way to compare fractions

Quick! Which fraction is bigger, 40/83 or 27/56? It's not always easy to mentally compare two fractions to determine which is larger. For this example, you can easily see that both fractions are a little less than 1/2, but to compare the numbers you need to compare the products 40*56

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Data Visualization | Programming Tips

Robert AllisonApril 30, 2021 0

Feeling the effects of the 2020 Census

Every 10 years the United States conducts a Census where we count all the people. This week the 2020 Census population totals for each state were released. And how might these numbers affect you? ... One thing the Census numbers are used for is to determine how many of the

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Analytics | Programming Tips

Rick WicklinApril 28, 2021 0

Compute the Hoeffding D statistic in SAS

There are many statistics that measure whether two continuous random variables are independent or whether they are related to each other in some way. The most well-known statistic is Pearson's correlation, which is a parametric measure of the linear relationship between two variables. A related measure is Spearman's rank correlation,

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Data Visualization | Programming Tips

Robert AllisonApril 26, 2021 0

What's the largest animal in each U.S. state?

Everybody likes to learn a bit of interesting trivia... It could make you look smart, or might help you win a bet in a bar. Or maybe give you something to amaze your kids with. Do you know what's the biggest non-domesticated land animal in your state? How about all

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Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Rick WicklinApril 26, 2021 0

On passing a list to a SAS/IML module

SAS/IML programmers often create and call user-defined modules. Recall that a module is a user-defined subroutine or function. A function returns a value; a subroutine can change one or more of its input arguments. I have written a complete guide to understanding SAS/IML modules, which contains many tips for working

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Cloud | Programming Tips | SAS Administrators

Tara St. ClairApril 23, 2021 0

Group-based access to Azure Files in the new SAS Viya

You've probably heard by now the new SAS Viya runs on containers orchestrated by Kubernetes. There is a lot to know and learn for both experienced users and k8s noobies alike. I would recommend searching the SAS Communities Library for a wealth of information on deployment, administration, usability, and more.

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Data Visualization | Programming Tips

Robert AllisonApril 20, 2021 0

Do IKEA directions cause you stress?

Have you ever brought home a piece of furniture-in-a-box, and felt undue stress while trying to make sense of the directions to assemble it? ... Apparently you're not alone! A recent analysis studied ~50,000 tweets about IKEA furniture, and determined whether the people posting the tweets were frustrated. They then

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Programming Tips

Chevell ParkerApril 20, 2021 0

Creating a report that displays only the column headings for a data set containing 0 records

This blog demonstrates how to create a report that provides only the column headings for data that is missing. The blog also explains how to create, select, and exclude output objects as well as how to generate reports with the SAS® Output Delivery System (ODS). These concepts are relevant to the task of generating a report with the column headings for a data set that contains no (0) observations.

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Programming Tips | SAS Events

Dina DuhonApril 20, 2021 0

Registration is open for a truly inspiring SAS Global Forum 2021

SAS Global Forum 2021 will be jam-packed with inspiring content. Register today to ensure you don't miss a second of this year's event.

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Programming Tips

Leonid BatkhanApril 14, 2021 0

Using shell scripts for massively parallel processing

SAS' Leonid Batkhan explores shell scripting as an alternative way to implement parallel processing.

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Data Visualization | Programming Tips

Robert AllisonApril 7, 2021 0

SAS graphs for R programmers - pie charts

This is another in my series of blog posts where I take a deep dive into converting R graphs into SAS graphs. Today we'll be working on pie charts. I know, I know ... you visualization 'purists' might be wagging your finger at me, and saying "pie charts are no good."

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