topic Re: Max and Min calculation in SAS Programming

Max and Min calculation

Learner25 — Sun, 08 May 2016 17:15:56 GMT

Dear SAS Community,

This is probably an easy question, however, I have trouble making it work. I just want to find out either a maximum or minimum number from two numbers that have unique values. For an example, I get errors when writing below:

data Test;
q1=5;
q2=10;
z=Largest(q1, q2);
run;

Thank you for your help!

Re: Max and Min calculation

stat_sas — Sun, 08 May 2016 17:37:43 GMT

data Test;
q1=5;
q2=10;
z=Largest(1,q1, q2);
run;

Re: Max and Min calculation

Reeza — Sun, 08 May 2016 17:47:55 GMT

Are you expecting to find the lowest value in the row or in the column?

If row the command can be MIN/MAX as in your subject line.

You can use the LARGEST function but the first parameter is what order your looking for, 1 is the maximum and 2 is the second highest. If you only have 2 values then that would correspond to max/min.

x = min(q1, q2);
y = max(q1, q2);

x_large = Largest(1, q1, q2);
y_large = Largest(2, q1, q2);

See the doc for LARGEST()

http://support.sas.com/documentation/cdl/en/lrdict/64316/HTML/default/viewer.htm#a002154862.htm


LARGEST (k, value-1<, value-2 ...>)

Arguments
k
is a numeric constant, variable, or expression that specifies which value to return.

value
specifies the value of a numeric constant, variable, or expression to be processed.

Re: Max and Min calculation

Learner25 — Sun, 08 May 2016 18:37:53 GMT

Thank you, Reeza!

I understand how the formula works now 🙂