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Programming Tips

Strengthen your programming skills with tips and techniques from the experts

Programming Tips

Rick WicklinOctober 1, 2018 0

Chi-square tests for proportions in one-way tables

Programmers on a SAS discussion forum recently asked about the chi-square test for proportions as implemented in PROC FREQ in SAS. One person asked the basic question, "how do I test the null hypothesis that the observed proportions are equal to a set of known proportions?" Another person said that

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Programming Tips

Rick WicklinSeptember 26, 2018 0

Radial basis functions and Gaussian kernels in SAS

A radial basis function is a scalar function that depends on the distance to some point, called the center point, c. One popular radial basis function is the Gaussian kernel φ(x; c) = exp(-||x – c||2 / (2 σ2)), which uses the squared distance from a vector x to the

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Analytics | Data Visualization | Programming Tips

Robert AllisonSeptember 24, 2018 0

River flooding in North Carolina from Hurricane Florence

Here in North Carolina, a hurricane recently moved very slowly across our state, causing major flooding, and even closing miles of interstate highways for longer than a week. There is data available online for gauges along the river (or gages, as they call them), but I doubt many people know

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Programming Tips

Rick WicklinSeptember 24, 2018 0

How many perfect riffle shuffles are required to restore a deck to its initial order?

Last week I compared the overhand shuffle to the riffle shuffle. I used random operations to simulate both kinds of shuffles and then compared how well they mix cards. The article caused one my colleague and fellow blogger, Rob Pratt, to ask if I was familiar with a bit of

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Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Jerry LeonardSeptember 21, 2018 0

Adding blank rows in TABULATE procedure results

Do you want to insert blank rows into your TABULATE procedure tables? Here's a SAS sample and two other methods that will get the job done.

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Advanced Analytics | Data for Good | Programming Tips

Chris HemedingerSeptember 18, 2018 0

Using machine learning to improve tumor biopsies

How can you use analytics to design better biopsies and improve outcomes? This high school student has some ideas, and she presented them at Analytics Experience 2018.

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Analytics | Data Visualization | Programming Tips

Robert AllisonSeptember 18, 2018 0

Hurricane Florence: rainfall totals in the Carolinas

"We been through every kind of rain there is. Little bitty stingin' rain, and big ol' fat rain, rain that flew in sideways, and sometimes rain even seemed to come straight up from underneath." Was that a quote from the Forrest Gump movie, or something said regarding Hurricane Florence? Could be either one! Hurricane Florence recently came through

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Government | Travel

Data Management | Learn SAS | Programming Tips | Students & Educators

Sian RobertsSeptember 18, 2018 0

Three Proc SQL Tips from Bestselling Author Kirk Paul Lafler

SAS Press author Kirk Paul Lafler's favorite tips using PROC SQL.

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Data for Good | Programming Tips

Chris HemedingerSeptember 17, 2018 0

Essential SAS tools to bring to your next hackathon

To succeed in any data-focused hackathon, you need a robust set of tools and skills – as well as a can-do attitude. Here's what you can expect from any hackathon: Messy data. It might come from a variety of sources, and won't necessarily be organized for analytics or reporting. That's

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Programming Tips

Rick WicklinSeptember 17, 2018 0

Linearly spaced vectors in SAS

The SAS/IML language and the MATLAB language are similar. Both provide a natural syntax for performing high-level computations on vectors and matrices, including basic linear algebra subroutines. Sometimes a SAS programmer will convert an algorithm from MATLAB into SAS/IML. Because the languages are not identical, I am sometimes asked, "what

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Data Visualization | Programming Tips

Warren F. KuhfeldSeptember 10, 2018 0

Advanced ODS Graphics: Unicode, tables, and graphs

You can use Unicode to display special characters in SAS output including tables and graphs. With graphs that analytical procedures produce, you might need additional steps.

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Analytics | Data Visualization | Programming Tips

Robert AllisonSeptember 10, 2018 0

Hurricane Florence - and other category 4 hurricanes that hit NC

Here in North Carolina (NC), we're pretty much resigned to the fact that many of the hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean are going to visit us. NC sticks out farther into the ocean than most of our neighboring states, and that just makes a tempting target for the hurricanes. But

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Programming Tips

Visualization of L1 distance matrix for items arranged on a 6 x 6 grid

Rick WicklinSeptember 10, 2018 0

Distances on rectangular grids

Given a rectangular grid with unit spacing, what is the expected distance between two random vertices, where distance is measured in the L1 metric? (Here "random" means "uniformly at random.") I recently needed this answer for some small grids, such as the one to the right, which is a 7 x 6

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Data Visualization | Programming Tips

Robert AllisonSeptember 7, 2018 0

Creating industry-specific infographics (eg, 3d printing)

I usually create very technical graphs, that just focus on conveying the information in a concise and straightforward manner (no wasted colors, and nothing to distract you from the data). But sometimes, depending on your audience and the purpose of the graph, you might need to create a graph that

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Data Management | Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Ron CodySeptember 6, 2018 0

New edition of the Cody classic: Learning SAS® by Example

Find out about the new edition of Ron Cody's latest best selling book.

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Programming Tips

Rick WicklinSeptember 6, 2018 0

The continued fraction representation of a rational number

Continued fractions show up in surprising places. They are used in the numerical approximations of certain functions, including the evaluation of the normal cumulative distribution function (normal CDF) for large values of x (El-bolkiny, 1995, p. 75-77) and in approximating the Lambert W function, which has applications in the modeling

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Analytics | Data Visualization | Programming Tips

Robert AllisonSeptember 5, 2018 0

How much land does the government own in each US state?

Many of the most beautiful areas in the US are owned by the government, to preserve them and allow access for everyone to enjoy them. And most US schools are traditionally closed during the summer, which provides families a great opportunity to go visit state and federal lands (parks, forests,

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Programming Tips

Rick WicklinSeptember 4, 2018 0

Store vectors of different lengths in a matrix

In the SAS/IML language, you can only concatenate vectors that have conforming dimensions. For example, to horizontally concatenate two vectors X and Y, the symbols X and Y must have the same number of rows. If not, the statement Z = X || Y will produce an error: ERROR: Matrices

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Analytics | Data Visualization | Programming Tips

Robert AllisonAugust 30, 2018 0

Which keyboard keys do you use most frequently?

If you're good at games like Wheel of Fortune, Scrabble, or Words with Friends, you've probably figured out that certain letters appear more often than others. But do you have a cool way to figure out which letters appear most & least frequently? How about using a computer to plot

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Programming Tips

Chris HemedingerAugust 28, 2018 0

Manage the current directory within your SAS program

Using relative file paths in your SAS programs? Use the new DLGCDIR function to manage your SAS working directory -- even in SAS Enterprise Guide or SAS Studio -- to ensure your programs are working the way they ought to.

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Learn SAS | Programming Tips | SAS Events

Sian RobertsAugust 28, 2018 0

What your favorite authors are reading: More SAS Global Forum papers chosen by SAS Press authors (Part 2)

This blog post highlights more SAS Global Forum papers chosen by SAS Press authors.

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Programming Tips

Rick WicklinAugust 27, 2018 0

On the assumptions (and misconceptions) of linear regression

A frequent topic on SAS discussion forums is how to check the assumptions of an ordinary least squares linear regression model. Some posts indicate misconceptions about the assumptions of linear regression. In particular, I see incorrect statements such as the following: Help! A histogram of my variables shows that they

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Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Kevin RussellAugust 24, 2018 0

How to COUNT CATs in SAS

How to count words in SAS with the COUNT functions, and concatenate strings by using the CAT functions. Use these tips to modernize your SAS code!

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Data Visualization | Programming Tips

Warren F. KuhfeldAugust 23, 2018 0

Marginal model plots

Marginal model plots display the marginal relationship between the response and each predictor. You can use a SAS autocall macro, %Marginal, to display marginal model plots.

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Programming Tips

Emily GaoAugust 23, 2018 0

Dynamic programming with SAS FCMP

Dynamic programming is a powerful technique to implement algorithms, and is often used to solve complex computational problems. This article shows how to use PROC FCMP to implement the "edit distance" algorithm.

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Analytics | Data Visualization | Programming Tips

Robert AllisonAugust 23, 2018 0

The most disproportionately popular job in each state

Showing the most popular jobs in each state is interesting (as I showed in my previous two blogs 1, 2) ... but not that interesting. How about something a little more quirky?!? ... Let's determine the most disproportionately popular job in each state! Their Map I got the idea for

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Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Sian RobertsAugust 22, 2018 0

What your favorite authors are reading: SAS Press authors highlight SAS Global Forum papers

Three bestselling SAS Press authors feature their favorite papers from SAS Global Forum 2018.

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Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Rick WicklinAugust 22, 2018 0

Standardized regression coefficients

A SAS programmer recently asked how to interpret the "standardized regression coefficients" as computed by the STB option on the MODEL statement in PROC REG and other SAS regression procedures. The SAS documentation for the STB option states, "a standardized regression coefficient is computed by dividing a parameter estimate by

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Analytics | Data Visualization | Programming Tips

Robert AllisonAugust 20, 2018 0

Most common jobs in the US - a small multiples comparison

Using small multiples is a neat way to display a lot of information in a small amount of space. But depending on how deeply you want to analyze and scrutinize the data, you need to be careful in choosing just how small you make your small multiples. Let's look at

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Programming Tips

Rick WicklinAugust 20, 2018 0

Calculators killed the standard statistical table

Video killed the radio star.... We can't rewind, we've gone too far. -- The Buggles (1979) "You kids have it easy," my father used to tell me. "When I was a kid, I didn't have all the conveniences you have today." He's right, and I could say the same

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