topic Re: Difference between Frequency and Weight variables (Visual Statistics) in SAS Academy for Data Science

Difference between Frequency and Weight variables (Visual Statistics)

pvareschi — Sun, 31 May 2020 18:16:38 GMT

Re: Predicting Analytics on Big Data

What is the difference between a Frequency and a Weight variable? (see page 4.5-4.6 of the course text)

Re: Difference between Frequency and Weight variables (Visual Statistics)

ed_sas_member — Sun, 31 May 2020 19:14:20 GMT

Hi @pvareschi
A WEIGTH statement can Ne used when you already have frequencies in your dataset (in a PROC FREQ for instance).
However, the main difference in my opinion is that the value of the WEIGHT variable is not required to be an integer.
Hope this helps!
Best,

Re: Difference between Frequency and Weight variables (Visual Statistics)

pvareschi — Mon, 01 Jun 2020 09:15:58 GMT

Thank you for your comments; I also wonder whethe the two variables may fulfil a different roles, in terms of their effect on a fitted model...or, at least, that seems to be the case from the wording in the course text, although I cannot understand how that is applied in practice.

Re: Difference between Frequency and Weight variables (Visual Statistics)

Ksharp — Mon, 01 Jun 2020 11:20:19 GMT

Both would get you the same parameter estimator, but Freq would have less confident interval, Weight would be bigger. In other words Freq would get you more accurate parameter estimator / better model.

@Rick_SAS wrote a blog about it a couple of years ago .

Re: Difference between Frequency and Weight variables (Visual Statistics)

Rick_SAS — Mon, 01 Jun 2020 11:24:36 GMT

See the article "The difference between frequencies and weights in regression analysis"