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Programming Tips

Strengthen your programming skills with tips and techniques from the experts

Analytics | Data Visualization | Programming Tips

Rick WicklinAugust 23, 2021 0

Sliced survival graphs in SAS

This article shows how to create a "sliced survival plot" for proportional-hazards models that are created by using PROC PHREG in SAS. Graphing the result of a statistical regression model is a valuable way to communicate the predictions of the model. Many SAS procedures use ODS graphics to produce graphs

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Data for Good | Data Visualization | Programming Tips

Robert AllisonAugust 19, 2021 0

Cary NC data - streetlights

Many cities have Open Data pages. But once you download the data, what can you do with it? This is my third in a series of blog posts where I download several datasets from Cary, NC's open data page, and give you a few ideas to get you started on

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Programming Tips

Peter Styliadis

Peter StyliadisAugust 19, 2021 0

CAS-Action! fetch CAS, fetch! - Part 2

In Part 1 of my series fetch CAS, fetch!, I executed the fetch CAS action to return rows from a CAS table. That was great, but what can you do with the results? Maybe you want to create a visualization that includes the top five cars by MSRP for all

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Data for Good | Data Visualization | Programming Tips

Robert AllisonAugust 17, 2021 0

Cary NC data - fire incidents

Many cities have Open Data pages. But once you download the data, what can you do with it? This is my second blog post where I download several datasets from Cary, NC's open data page, and and give you a few ideas to get you started on your own data

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Programming Tips

Martin MinceyAugust 17, 2021 0

How to create EMF graph output files that can be edited outside of your SAS® program

What happens if you need to edit graph output files from SAS in a different application (for example, Microsoft Word)? It is not recommended that you edit your SAS graph output outside of SAS, but, if you must do so, you need to create your graphics output as EMF (Enhanced Metafile Format) graph output.

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Programming Tips

Figure 1. Sample document

Daria Rostovtseva

Daria RostovtsevaAugust 16, 2021 0

Classifying messy documents: A common-sense approach (Part II)

In Part I of this blog post, I provided an overview of the approach my team and I took tackling the problem of classifying diverse, messy documents at scale. I shared the details of how we chose to preprocess the data and how we created features from documents of interest

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Programming Tips

Peter Styliadis

Peter StyliadisAugust 12, 2021 0

CAS-Action! fetch CAS, fetch! - Part 1

Welcome to my SAS Users blog series CAS Action! - a series on fundamentals. I've broken the series into logical, consumable parts. If you'd like to start by learning a little more about what CAS Actions are, please see CAS Actions and Action Sets - a brief intro. Or if

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Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Rick WicklinAugust 11, 2021 0

More on the SWEEP operator for least-square regression models

One of the benefits of using the SWEEP operator is that it enables you to "sweep in" columns (add effects to a model) in any order. This article shows that if you use the SWEEP operator, you can compute a SSCP matrix and use it repeatedly to estimate any linear

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Programming Tips

Ron CodyAugust 10, 2021 0

How to Transform a Skewed Distribution to a Uniform Distribution

This post demonstrates how to rank data and how to place these ranks into roughly equal groups. There are certain variables, such as annual salary, that are highly skewed. There are many who earn between $50,00 and $150,000, but some who earn millions or hundreds of millions of dollars a

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Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Rick WicklinAugust 9, 2021 0

Never multiply with a large permutation matrix

Do you ever use a permutation matrix to change the order of rows or columns in a matrix? Did you know that there is a more efficient way in matrix-oriented languages such as SAS/IML, MATLAB, and R? Remember the following tip: Never multiply with a large permutation matrix! Instead, use

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Programming Tips

Peter Styliadis

Peter StyliadisAugust 6, 2021 0

CAS Actions and Action Sets - a brief intro

I'm excited to curate a series of posts focused on CAS Actions. However, before I dive into details and code, I thought I'd take a moment to lay a foundation for a better understanding of CAS and CAS actions. I'll cover things here at a high level as there's quite

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Programming Tips

Peter Styliadis

Peter StyliadisAugust 6, 2021 0

CAS Action! - a series on fundamentals

I'm excited to bring a series of posts centered on CAS Actions. The topics in the list below will be covered in posts set to publish in the next few weeks. Please check back often for new releases. CAS Actions and Action Sets - a brief intro - Introduction to the

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Programming Tips

Rick WicklinAugust 2, 2021 0

The art of rotations and reflections

Art evokes an emotional response in the viewer, but sometimes art also evokes a cerebral response. When I see patterns and symmetries in art, I think about a related mathematical object or process. Recently, a Twitter user tweeted about a painting called "Phantom’s Shadow, 2018" by the Nigerian-born artist, Odili

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Data Visualization | Programming Tips

Robert AllisonJuly 30, 2021 0

Have deaths in the US been increasing, or decreasing?

Some claim that deaths in the US have been increasing, and some claim they have been decreasing. Which do you think is correct? Let's take a look at the data ... The Data Here in the US, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is a good/official source of data

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Analytics | Programming Tips

Randy CollicaJuly 29, 2021 0

An analytic transform for cantankerous data

As an example, when using ordinary least squares regression (OLS), if your response or dependent attribute’s residuals are not normally distributed, your analysis is likely going to be affected and typically not in a good way. The farther away your input data is from normality, the impact on your model

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Data Visualization | Programming Tips

Robert AllisonJuly 27, 2021 0

How to make your data look worse (than it really is)

"With great power comes great responsibility." I'm not sure exactly where this quote comes from, but I think everyone should keep it in mind when creating graphs and maps! There are many design decisions that can influence how the end user perceives the data in a graph. For example: The

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Programming Tips

Ron CodyJuly 27, 2021 0

The Amazing COMPRESS Function

In the past, the COMPRESS function was useful. Since SAS version 9, it has become a blockbuster, and you might not have noticed. The major change was the addition of a new optional parameter called MODIFIERS. The traditional use of the COMPRESS function was to remove blanks or a list

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Programming Tips

Rick WicklinJuly 26, 2021 0

Compare the default definitions for sample quantiles in SAS, R, and Python

A SAS programmer recently asked why his SAS program and his colleague's R program display different estimates for the quantiles of a very small data set (less than 10 observations). I pointed the programmer to my article that compares the nine common definitions for sample quantiles. The article has a

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Programming Tips | SAS Administrators

Ben YarbroughJuly 23, 2021 0

How to use the SAS® 9 Content Assessment Tool

SAS' Ben Yarbrough reveals the four questions to answer and four steps to take as you transition to SAS Viya.

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Analytics | Data Visualization | Programming Tips

Rick WicklinJuly 19, 2021 0

Copulas and multivariate distributions with normal marginals

After my recent articles on simulating data by using copulas, many readers commented about the power of copulas. Yes, they are powerful, and the geometry of copulas is beautiful. However, it is important to be aware of the limitations of copulas. This article creates a bizarre example of bivariate data,

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Data Visualization | Programming Tips

Robert AllisonJuly 14, 2021 0

SAS can turn your world upside down!

Who's to say that 'north' should always be at the top of a map? Perhaps in certain situations, you might want 'south' (or some other direction) to be at the top. Perhaps you're one of our crazy Australian customers who looks at the world a little differently. Well, whatever the

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Analytics | Programming Tips

Rick WicklinJuly 14, 2021 0

Compare computational methods for least squares regression

In a previous article, I discussed various ways to solve a least-square linear regression model. I discussed the SWEEP operator (used by many SAS regression routines), the LU-based methods (SOLVE and INV in SAS/IML), and the QR decomposition (CALL QR in SAS/IML). Each method computes the estimates for the regression

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Programming Tips

Chris DeHartJuly 12, 2021 0

The SAS/ACCESS Developer's Corner: SUBCHAR-acteristics

Understanding the problem Working with character data of different encodings across different systems can occasionally result in failures to translate or transcode that data from its source format to a destination format. When using a SAS/ACCESS LIBNAME engine to query DBMS data, this scenario can end up causing errors when

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Data Visualization | Programming Tips

Robert AllisonJuly 8, 2021 0

Plagues and locusts ... or is that cicadas?

I hope you're all doing well, in this year of plagues and locusts! I'm sure I don't even need to mention which plague I'm talking about. But what about the locusts? Are you up on your entomological studies? Follow along, and see if you really know what locusts are... Locusts

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Analytics | Programming Tips

Rick WicklinJuly 7, 2021 0

Simulate multivariate correlated data by using PROC COPULA in SAS

In general, it is hard to simulate multivariate data that has a specified correlation structure. Copulas make that task easier for continuous distributions. A previous article presented the geometry behind a copula and explained copulas in an intuitive way. Although I strongly believe that statistical practitioners should be familiar with

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Programming Tips

Chris Hemedinger

Chris HemedingerJuly 6, 2021 0

How to work with emojis in SAS

Emojis are showing up in our data. Here's what you need to know when working with emojis in your SAS code.

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Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Leonid BatkhanJuly 6, 2021 0

Little known secrets of DO-loops with index variables

SAS' Leonid Batkhan reveals how to use versatile iterative DO loops with index variable pertaining to SAS DATA steps.

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Analytics | Programming Tips

Rick WicklinJune 30, 2021 0

Compute 2-D cumulative sums and ogives

A recent article about how to estimate a two-dimensional distribution function in SAS inspired me to think about a related computation: a 2-D cumulative sum. Suppose you have numbers in a matrix, X. A 2-D cumulative sum is a second matrix, C, such that the C[p,q] gives the sum of

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Programming Tips

Yinliang WuJune 25, 2021 0

How to evaluate SAS expressions in DATA Step dynamically

In many programming languages, there is a function named eval() that can be used to evaluate an expression and return the result at run time. For example, in Python, the eval() function parses the expression passed to it and runs a Python expression or code within the program. Even Python

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Programming Tips

Rick WicklinJune 23, 2021 0

The probability integral transform

This article uses simulation to demonstrate the fact that any continuous distribution can be transformed into the uniform distribution on (0,1). The function that performs this transformation is a familiar one: it is the cumulative distribution function (CDF). A continuous CDF is defined as an integral, so the transformation is

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