BASUG Quarterly Meeting Announcement
We are thrilled with the response we got to our Call-for-Papers for our Q1 Coders’ Corner meeting. This meeting will feature many presenters – some first-timers, some seasoned – covering a variety of topics. Please join us to learn lots of tips ‘n techniques from your fellow BASUG colleagues.
Topic: Coders’
Corner 2008
When: Friday, March 28, 2008, 8:15 AM – Noon
Where: Holiday Inn
(617) 277-1200
For directions,
please visit:
http://www.basug.org/directions.html
How: Individual, On-Line Registration
Required. No Email!
To register: Please visit: http://www.basug.org/register.php3
Contact: If you have questions
about the meeting contact Sally Skinner (sally.skinner@tufts.edu)
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Agenda* |
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8:15 |
Sign in
and Refreshments |
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8:45 |
Announcements |
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9:00 |
PUT and INPUT
functions: Making more use of formats and informats
by James Zeitler,
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9:12 |
Using SAS® Graph to
produce four graphs per page by Amanda Tweed, Millenium
Pharmaceuticals |
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9:24 |
Population Pyramid
Graphs by Meena Doshi, |
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9:36 |
by John D. Chapman, PhD, Markcelian Analytics, Inc. |
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9:48 |
BREAK |
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10:10 |
Exporting the Data to
EXCEL? Order the columns the way you want them! by Mark Martin, Siemens Healthcare
Diagnostics |
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10:22 |
Tricks to create
report quality WORD tables and figures in SAS®" by Brendan Bartley, CBAR, |
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10:34 |
Compressing Output
files in a SAS® job (on UNIX) by
Leslie Somos, Paraxel |
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10:46 |
Writing SAS® Functions
Without SAS® Toolkit by Jerry Lewis, Biogen
Idec |
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10:58 |
BREAK |
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11:15 |
Comparing Values
Across Observations: Be Careful by Prafulla Girase, IMS Health |
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11:27 |
How to automatically
run SAS® procedures on a group of datasets
within a single directory by Diana Ventura, CBAR, |
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11:39 |
Go Where Few Have Gone
Before (learn to use SAS® metadata) by
Steven Ezzy, Ingenix |
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11:51 |
Closing
remarks & announcements |
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Noon |
Meeting
Adjourned |
*Note: Times are approximate and subject to change. Please re-visit the BASUG website
( www.basug.org) for updated information.
Abstracts and Bios
Tricks to create
report quality WORD tables and figures in SAS®
by Brendan Bartley
This paper describes
some macros and tricks to enhance RTF output for reports. The first macro allows the user to move
tables within a document and have the table numbering change corresponding to
their location in the document. It also sets up bookmarks for reference in a
report. Another macro eliminates all but the first section breaks in a RTF
document. The last macro gives a table its own style name so that its
formatting does not change when the formatting of the text in the document
changes.
Brendan Bartley is a
programmer in clinical trials at the Center for Biostatistics in AIDS Research
(CBAR) at the
by John D. Chapman, PhD
SAS® marketing of Enterprise
Guide (EG) emphasizes its graphical nature, with tasks and wizards that offer
“point-and-click interface to the full power of SAS.” But EG also has many
features that make it an attractive alternative to the conventional Windows
interface for programming. This Coders’ Corner presentation will present
several such features and seek to motivate programmers who aren’t using EG to
give it a try.
John D. Chapman provides
data analysis and reporting services to the health care industry. SAS® is a
valued tool in his arsenal. A long-time user of the SAS® Windows interface, he
became an EG convert with the release of version 4.1 and would never choose to
go back.
Population
Pyramid Graphs
by Meena Doshi
The most important
characteristics of a population—in addition to its size and the rate at which it is expanding or contracting—are the
ways in which its members are distributed according to age, sex, ethnic or
racial category, and residential status
(urban or rural). Perhaps the most
fundamental of these characteristics is the age distribution of a
population. SAS® can be used to create
these population pyramids that can depict
the age and sex distribution of the population.
Meena Doshi is a Statistician at New England
Research Institutes, Inc located in
Go Where Few Have
Gone Before (learn to use SAS® metadata)
by Stephen Ezzy
As has often been said,
there are many ways to accomplish the same thing in SAS®. Many
SAS® users are unaware of the 'data about their data' (better known as metadata) that the
SAS® system maintains in the SASHelp library. This
presentation suggests ways to use these data to think outside the box in terms
of accomplishing SAS® tasks. (It may even suggest a few tasks that might not be
possible any other way!)
Steve Ezzy has been with Ingenix in
fishery biology. He even wrote a SAS® program to solve sudoku puzzles and was pretty
pleased with himself about that until he discovered that every Tom, Dick
and Harry on the
SAS-L web site has done
the same thing.
Comparing Values Across Observations:
Be Careful
by Prafulla Girase
There are several
techniques that can be used to compare values across observations in SAS®. It
is important to understand how each technique works in order to pick the most
appropriate technique and get correct results. This paper discusses three of
the techniques that can be used. The techniques discussed in this paper include
the LAG function, one-to-one reading, and one-to-one merging. To illustrate
appropriate usage and
highlight advantages of each technique, a business question is proposed and
answered
using all three techniques. After reading this paper, you will be
better prepared to select the most appropriate method in instances where values
must be compared across observations. The intended audience for this paper is
someone with a basic understanding of BASE SAS®.
Prafulla Girase is a Statistical Programmer at
IMS Health in
Writing SAS®
Functions Without SAS® Toolkit
by Jerry Lewis
Where a frequently
repeated calculation can be written in closed form, a
parameterized SAS® macro can be written to produce the non-terminated SAS®
expression. Since the expression is
non-terminated, the macro effectively behaves like a SAS® function (that can be
used within a larger expression in a SAS® data step). As an example, a macro
function for exact Clopper-Pearson binomial
confidence limits will be discussed (published implementations, such as Daly
[1992] used a dedicated data step). A seed list of some other useful
expressions (exact Poisson confidence limits, 1-sided normal tolerance factors,
Wald-Wolfowitz approximate 2-side normal tolerance
factors, etc) will be given to stimulate thinking about other possible
applications.
Jerry Lewis is a Lead
Biostatistician (nonclinical) at Biogen Idec in
Exporting the
Data to EXCEL? Order the columns the way you want them!
by Mark Martin
Do you spend time
re-ordering the variable columns in Excel after exporting data
from SAS® datasets? You can specify the variable order before Proc
EXPORT in either of two ways: the DATA step RETAIN statement, or the Proc SQL
SELECT statement. Code examples will show how to do this. You’ll also learn
subtle Proc Export differences between SAS® 8 and SAS® 9 for Excel output.
Mark Martin is a Senior
Biostatistician at Siemens Healthcare Diagnostics in
Compressing
Output files in a SAS® job (on UNIX)
by Leslie J. Somos
When your disk space is
limited, here is one way to write your flat file from SAS® in an
already-compressed format, instead of writing it out and then compressing it
outside of SAS® (which requires space for both the original file and the
compressed version on disk simultaneously).
Leslie has used SAS® for
many years, on many platforms. He misses
the documentation for Version 5, when it all fit into a single (~2-inch thick)
book. At Boston University School of
Public Health, he recently earned a Master of Public Health with concentration
in Biostatistics. He currently works at
PAREXEL in
Using SAS® Graph
to produce four graphs per page
by Amanda Tweed
SAS® Graph provides many
options for enhancing graphical display. While simple bivariate
plots can be generated using very basic code, producing numerous graphs based
on data subsets can lead to an overwhelming volume of graphical output that is
cumbersome to review. Condensing the output facilitates comparison between
plots, aids in the review of voluminous output and reduces paper use. PROC
GREPLAY allows the programmer to define a template and position multiple graphs
per page. Used in conjunction with the ODF RTF destination, the code is not
complex. This session demonstrates the use of the GREPLAY procedure to display
four separate graphs created
using PROC GPLOT on a single page and highlights the benefits of this
form of output.
Amanda Tweed is a
Statistical Programmer at Millennium Pharmaceuticals in
How to
automatically run SAS® procedures on a group of datasets within
a single directory
by Diana Ventura
Sometimes it is
necessary to analyze a group of datasets. In this case it makes sense to create
a macro variable that represents the dataset names. The macro variable allows
SAS® procedures to be run on a group of datasets without typing the names of
each dataset, this streamlines repetitive code and eliminates needless typing.
It might seem complicated to capture the name of datasets in a selected
directory into a macro variable but the process actually requires only the use
of the contents option within the Proc Datasets procedure, the use of call symput to put the variable into a macro variable, and
setting up a iterative macro do loop to initiate use of the macro. All of this
can be accomplished in a few lines of code.
Diana Ventura is the
Head of Standardization for the Center for Biostatistics in AIDS Research, where
she manages meta-data analysis, clinical data quality assurance, and CRF forms
programming. She has been using SAS® in the public health arena since 1992.
PUT and INPUT
functions: Making more use of formats and informats
by James Zeitler
Using the INPUT
statements with informats is the standard way to read
into SAS®
from an external data file. And the PUT statement with formats is the
analogous way to write from SAS® to an external data file. In this talk we’ll
see how to use informats and formats with the INPUT
and PUT functions to transform variables in a SAS® dataset. It’s a good thing.
James Zeitler is a Research Database Analyst at
primarily to assist faculty doing research in a variety of business-related
disciplines. He has been using SAS® to do this sort of thing for at least
twenty years.
BASUG Membership
Keep your BASUG
Membership up-to-date! Print out a
membership form from our website, and bring it with you to the meeting (along
with your check). Please note that we
have discontinued Corporate Memeberships – we now
provide only Individual Membership at $30 annually. For more information on our membership
policy, or to print out a form visit: http://www.basug.org/basugj.shtml
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