topic Re: Very Basic SAS question in New SAS User

Very Basic SAS question

ASerrato — Wed, 21 Aug 2019 00:36:35 GMT

Hello! I am very VERY new to SAS and I am stuck in something very basic. I am working with SAS Studio and am trying to get the number of records (n), mean, standard deviation, minimum, and maximum values for each column for a data set. I enter:

/* Get descriptive statistics */

PROC MEANS DATA=myData; RUN;

I run it and it is only giving me the N Obs as a result , what I am doing wrong?

Re: Very Basic SAS question

novinosrin — Wed, 21 Aug 2019 01:03:49 GMT

PROC MEANS DATA=myData n min max mean std; 
var _numeric_;
RUN;

PROC MEANS DATA=myData n min max mean std; 
var col1 col2 col3;
RUN;

Re: Very Basic SAS question

ASerrato — Wed, 21 Aug 2019 01:03:18 GMT

Thank you @novinosrin . That makes total sense! But now I got stuck a bit further...

1 OPTIONS NONOTES NOSTIMER NOSOURCE NOSYNTAXCHECK;

73 PROC MEANS DATA=myData n min max mean std;

74 var _numeric_;

WARNING: No numeric variables found in data set WORK.MYDATA.

75 RUN;

ERROR: Statistics requested for printing, but no VAR statement has been specified. No printed output will be produced.

ERROR: Neither the PRINT option nor a valid output statement has been given.

Please help!!!!!!!

Re: Very Basic SAS question

novinosrin — Wed, 21 Aug 2019 01:06:40 GMT

Plz check if you have

1. A dataset by the name mydata

2. if yes, run

proc contents data=mydata;

run;

the results should tell you the info about variables in the dataset

3 if the above 2 is fine, run proc means as suggested

Re: Very Basic SAS question

ASerrato — Wed, 21 Aug 2019 01:11:49 GMT

@novinosrin

I got this.. seems like the type is Char

Alphabetic List of Variables and Attributes# Variable Type Len Format Informat Label21

B	Char	109	$109.	$109.	B
FRED_Graph_Observations	Char	42	$42.	$42.	FRED Graph Observations

But my dataset contains numbers, which is where I need to get the summary statistics from

Federal Reserve Economic Data

Link: https://fred.stlouisfed.org

Help: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/help-faq

Economic Research Division

Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis

A191RL1Q225SBEA

Real Gross Domestic Product, Percent Change from Preceding Period, Quarterly, Seasonally Adjusted Annual Rate

Frequency: Quarterly

observation_date

A191RL1Q225SBEA

17258

-1

17349

-.8

17441

6.4

17533

6.2

17624

6.8

17715

2.3

17807

17899

-5.4

17989

-1.4

18080

4.2

18172

-3.3

18264

16.7

18354

12.8

18445

16.4

18537

7.9

18629

5.5

18719

7.1

18810

8.5

18902

18994

4.3

19085

19176

2.9

19268

13.8

19360

7.6

19450

3.1

19541

-2.2

19633

-5.9

19725

-1.9

19815

19906

4.6

19998

8.1

20090

11.9

20180

6.7

20271

5.5

20363

2.4

20455

-1.5

20546

3.3

20637

-.4

20729

6.7

20821

2.6

20911

-.9

21002

21094

-4.1

21186

-10

21276

2.7

21367

9.6

21459

9.7

21551

7.9

21641

9.3

21732

21824

1.1

21916

9.3

22007

-2.1

22098

22190

-5

22282

2.7

22372

22463

7.9

22555

8.1

22647

7.3

22737

3.7

22828

22920

1.3

23012

4.4

23102

4.6

23193

9.1

23285

2.6

23377

8.7

23468

4.4

23559

6.4

23651

1.2

23743

23833

5.1

23924

9.2

24016

9.5

24108

10.1

24198

1.4

24289

3.4

24381

3.3

24473

3.6

24563

24654

3.8

24746

24838

8.4

24929

6.9

25020

3.1

25112

1.6

25204

6.4

25294

1.2

100

25385

2.7

Re: Very Basic SAS question

novinosrin — Wed, 21 Aug 2019 01:18:27 GMT

if the values are all numbers but are stored as char, keep it simple as you learn

/*convert char to num*/

data num_result;

set input_dataset;

num_var1=input(char_var1,8.);

num_var2=input(char_var2,8.);/*and so on*/

run;

Then use the num_result dataset as input in your proc means as discussed previously

Re: Very Basic SAS question

ASerrato — Wed, 21 Aug 2019 01:25:06 GMT

Thank you!!

Re: Very Basic SAS question

Tom — Wed, 21 Aug 2019 12:56:36 GMT

That explains why PROC MEANS was only showing you the number of observations. You need to have numeric variables to be able to calculate statistics like MEAN.