topic Re: How to do a descending output in proc freq? in SAS Programming

How to do a descending output in proc freq?

ResoluteCarbon — Wed, 31 Mar 2021 20:38:00 GMT

Hi all SAS Users,

Today I want to have the output that Percent is ranked descending.

My code is

ods noproctitle;
title' Categories of Reported Species ';
proc freq data=pg1.np_species;
tables Category/ nocum;

From what I learnt, if I want to have Frequency as descending, I can use option order=freq on proc freq data statement, if I want the order of Category as alphabet ascending, I just add nothing. But when I tried to rank the percent by descending, I cannot do that. I am wondering is there any option to do have the result that Percent will be ranked as descending without creating another proc sort datastep?

Thanks in advance.

P/S: What I tried are:

34         ods noproctitle;
35         title' Categories of Reported Species ';
36         proc freq data=pg1.np_species order=percent;
                                               _______
                                               22
                                               76
ERROR 22-322: Syntax error, expecting one of the following: DATA, FORMATTED, FREQ, INTERNAL.  
ERROR 76-322: Syntax error, statement will be ignored.

34         ods noproctitle;
35         title' Categories of Reported Species ';


36         proc freq data=pg1.np_species;
37         tables descending Category/ nocum;
ERROR: Variable DESCENDING not found.

And could you please let me know why these two approaches are wrong?

Re: How to do a descending output in proc freq?

Astounding — Wed, 31 Mar 2021 20:48:23 GMT

According to the documentation, you would use:

proc freq data=pg1.np_species order=freq;

Re: How to do a descending output in proc freq?

Reeza — Wed, 31 Mar 2021 20:50:54 GMT

For a table with only a single variable, the order of highest frequency is the same order as highest percent since the denominator is consistent across all rows.

So use ORDER=FREQ will give you the desired results.

AFAIK, there isn't another way to control the order besides SORT and ORDER=DATA to use the data order.

Re: How to do a descending output in proc freq?

ResoluteCarbon — Wed, 31 Mar 2021 20:55:57 GMT

Hi @Astounding

But this option only works with Frequency variable, not Percentage variable.

Thanks.