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Programming Tips

Strengthen your programming skills with tips and techniques from the experts

Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Rick WicklinAugust 7, 2019 0

The essential guide to binning in SAS

Do you want to bin a numeric variable into a small number of discrete groups? This article compiles a dozen resources and examples related to binning a continuous variable. The examples show both equal-width binning and quantile binning. In addition to standard one-dimensional techniques, this article also discusses various techniques

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Learn SAS | Machine Learning | Programming Tips

Rick WicklinAugust 5, 2019 0

How to use PROC HPBIN to bin numerical variables

Binning transforms a continuous numerical variable into a discrete variable with a small number of values. When you bin univariate data, you define cut point that define discrete groups. I've previously shown how to use PROC FORMAT in SAS to bin numerical variables and give each group a meaningful name

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Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Rick WicklinJuly 31, 2019 0

Use numeric values for column headers when printing a matrix

Sometimes a little thing can make a big difference. I am enjoying a new enhancement of SAS/IML 15.1, which enables you to use a numeric vector as the column header or row header when you print a SAS/IML matrix. Prior to SAS/IML 15.1, you had to use the CHAR or

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Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Rick WicklinJuly 29, 2019 0

Vectorize the computation of the Mandelbrot set in a matrix language

When my colleague, Robert Allison, blogged about visualizing the Mandelbrot set, I was reminded of a story from the 1980s, which was the height of the fractal craze. A research group in computational mathematics had been awarded a multimillion-dollar grant to purchase a supercomputer. When the supercomputer arrived and got

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Analytics | Internet of Things | Programming Tips

Joe FurbeeJuly 26, 2019 0

SAS Event Stream Processing on SAS Cloud - my journey

In a previous post, Zero to SAS in 60 Seconds- SAS Machine Learning on SAS Cloud, I documented my experience with a SAS free trial on the SAS Cloud. Well, the engineers at SAS have been busy and created another free trial. The new trial covers SAS Event Stream Processing

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Data Visualization | Programming Tips

Robert AllisonJuly 25, 2019 0

The *real* country names in Europe

Have you ever had one of those moments when something you had assumed was true all your life, turned out not to be true? I remember that happening in my high school Spanish class (taught by the wonderful Señor Shoaf), when he let us in on a little secret -

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Programming Tips

DATA Step compiler shortcut

Ron CodyJuly 24, 2019 0

A DATA step compiler trick to get the record count

Years ago I saw a line of SAS code that was really puzzling. It was a statement that started with: if 0 then … ; What? This was a statement that would always be evaluated as false. Why would anyone write such a statement? Recently, I was discussing with a

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Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Rick WicklinJuly 24, 2019 0

Implement the Gumbel distribution in SAS

SAS supports more than 25 common probability distributions for the PDF, CDF, QUANTILE, and RAND functions. Of course, there are infinitely many distributions, so not every possible distribution is supported. If you need a less-common distribution, I've shown how to extend the functionality of Base SAS (by using PROC FCMP)

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Data Visualization | Programming Tips

Robert AllisonJuly 22, 2019 0

Travel around the world, always in perfect weather!

The guys over at reservations.com recently posted a really interesting idea, and a map to go along with it! They worked out an itinerary where you could spend one year traveling around the world (staying in a different place each week), and always be in a comfortable temperature around 70-75°

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Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Kathryn McLawhornJuly 19, 2019 0

How the RANK procedure calculates ranks with groups and ties

The RANK procedure (PROC RANK) is useful for ranking numeric variables in a data set across observations. You often see PROC RANK used to rank data into quartiles, deciles, or percentiles. This action requires that you use the GROUPS= option in the PROC RANK statement. This blog answers three questions

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Data Visualization | Programming Tips

Robert AllisonJuly 18, 2019 0

Fun with Mandelbrot sets and Proc SGplot

A few years ago Mandelbrot sets and fractals were all the rage! (Am I showing my age? Hahaha!) I thought creating some plots of this type of data would be a good way to sharpen my SAS programming skills, and it would make a nice/interesting example to help teach people

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Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Leonid BatkhanJuly 17, 2019 0

Passing comma-delimited values into SAS macros and macro functions

Have you ever tried to pass comma-delimited values to SAS macro or to a SAS macro function? How can SAS distinguish commas separating parameters or arguments from commas separating parts of the values? Passing comma-delimited value as an argument to a SAS macro function Let’s say you want to extract

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Programming Tips

Rick WicklinJuly 17, 2019 0

Write numeric and character matrices to a data set from SAS/IML

In the SAS/IML language, a matrix contains data of one type: numeric or character. If you want to create a SAS data set that contains mixed-type data (numeric and character), SAS/IML 15.1 provides support to write multiple matrices to a data set by using a single statement. Specifically, the CREATE

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Data Visualization | Programming Tips

Robert AllisonJuly 15, 2019 0

Plotting data on a Census block map

As the 2020 Census approaches, I'm getting my code ready to plot the data! And a question I often hear is "Can you use SAS software to plot data on a Census block map?" Rather than tell you 'yes', let me show you 'yes' :) Preparing the map First I

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Data Visualization | Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Rick WicklinJuly 15, 2019 0

Create a discrete heat map with PROC SGPLOT

Heat maps have many uses. You can use a heat map to visualize correlation matrices, to visualize longitudinal data ("lasagna plots"), and to visualize counts in any two-dimensional table. As of SAS 9.4m3, you can create heat maps in SAS by using the HEATMAP and HEATMAPPARM statements in PROC SGPLOT.

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Data Visualization | Programming Tips

Robert AllisonJuly 11, 2019 0

Plotting California earthquake data!

Earthquakes have been in the news lately - in particular, two very strong earthquakes that recently hit California. Exactly where did they hit? ... Let's plot it on a map! But before we get busy analyzing the California data, here's a picture to get you in the mood for studying

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Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Derek MorganJuly 10, 2019 0

SAS Press Author Derek Morgan on Timetables and Model Trains

I was sitting in a model railroad club meeting when one of our more enthusiastic young members said, "Wouldn't it be cool if we could make a computer simulation, with trains going between stations and all. We could have cars and engines assigned to each train and timetables and…" So,

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Data Visualization | Programming Tips

Rick WicklinJuly 10, 2019 0

Find the center of each cell in a mosaic plot

I recently showed how to create an annotation data set that will overlay cell counts or percentages on a mosaic plot. A mosaic plot is a visual representation of a cross-tabulation of observed frequencies for two categorical variables. The mosaic plot with cell counts is shown to the right. The

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Data Visualization | Programming Tips

Robert AllisonJuly 8, 2019 0

Which counties in the US are still 'dry'?

We just had the big July 4th holiday weekend here in the US. And as with many holidays, there was a lot of drinking. Which got me thinking/wondering ... which counties do not allow alcohol to be sold (ie, which counties are 'dry')? And it seemed like a question that

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Government | Sports & Entertainment

Data Visualization | Programming Tips

Rick WicklinJuly 8, 2019 0

How to add an annotation to a mosaic plot in SAS

The mosaic plot is a graphical visualization of a frequency table. In previous articles, I showed how to create a mosaic plot in SAS by using PROC FREQ and how to define a template in the Graph Template Language (GTL) by using the MOSAICPARM statement. This article shows how to

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Data Visualization | Programming Tips

Robert AllisonJuly 3, 2019 0

Can you choose an SUV based on MPG?

I think it's time to replace my 2008 Prius. It has served me well, been basically maintenance-free, and gotten good gas mileage ... so, why not just get a newer Prius? Well, I've got the itch to get back into an SUV for my daily driver (I had a Bronco

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Energy & Utilities

Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Rick WicklinJuly 3, 2019 0

Create a custom informat in SAS

An informat helps you read data into a SAS data set. SAS supports more than 100 informats. The most common informats are related to dates and times and make it easy to read an input string such as 28JAN2001 and convert it to a SAS date such as 15003. Yet

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Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Missy HannahJuly 2, 2019 0

Summer reading – Book recommendations from SAS Press authors

One of my favorite parts of summer is a relaxing weekend by the pool. Summer is the time I get to finally catch up on my reading list, which has been building over the year. So, if expanding your knowledge is a goal of yours this summer, SAS Press has

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Programming Tips

Chris HollandJune 27, 2019 0

Working with ever-changing CDISC standards

When Jack Shostak and I first started thinking about writing a SAS book on implementing CDISC (Clinical Data Interchange Standards Consortium) standards, we held one truth to be self-evident: that at least some parts of the book would be outdated before it was even published. Thanks to some lucky timing

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Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Leonid BatkhanJune 26, 2019 0

Finding n-th instance of a substring within a string

"There's a way to do it better - find it." - Thomas A. Edison When it comes to SAS coding, this quote by Thomas A. Edison is my best advisor. Time permitting, I love finding better ways of implementing SAS code. But what code feature means “better” – brevity, clarity

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Analytics | Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Rick WicklinJune 26, 2019 0

Jump-start PROC LOGISTIC by using parameter estimates from PROC HPLOGISTIC

SAS/STAT software contains a number of so-called HP procedures for training and evaluating predictive models. ("HP" stands for "high performance.") A popular HP procedure is HPLOGISTIC, which enables you to fit logistic models on Big Data. A goal of the HP procedures is to fit models quickly. Inferential statistics such

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Programming Tips

Deva KumarJune 25, 2019 0

"CAS Stored Process" with my Favorite Action Hero runCasl

In his article How to use CASL to develop and work with user-defined CAS actions, Brian Kinnebrew defines CASL as "a language specification used by the SAS client to interact with and provide easy access to Cloud Analytic Services (CAS). CASL is a statement-based scripting language with many uses and

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Programming Tips

Kevin RussellJune 21, 2019 0

Learn the three easiest ways to load data into CAS tables

For every project in SAS®, the first step is almost always making your data available. This blog shows you how to load three of the most common input data types—a data set, a text file, and a Microsoft Excel file—into SAS® Cloud Analytic Services (CAS) tables. The three methods that

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Data Visualization | Programming Tips

Robert AllisonJune 19, 2019 0

Airbnb's top wish-listed homes in NC!

As the sharing economy grows, you can catch a ride on Uber, have meals delivered by Grubhub ... and even stay in someone else's house (rather than a hotel) via sites like Airbnb. And speaking of that last one, I recently read an article listing Airbnb's top 20 'wish-listed' homes

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Hospitality | Travel

Analytics | Programming Tips | Risk Management

Frederik Vandenberghe

Frederik VandenbergheJune 18, 2019 0

Deploy SAS Viya on AWS - Quick Start

As a data scientist, did you ever come to the point where you felt the need for an evolved analytics platform bringing together the disparate skills of open source and commercial software? A system that can enable advanced analytic capabilities. This is now possible and easy to implement. With many

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