topic Re: Minimum of prior values in SAS Programming

Minimum of prior values

Doug____ — Tue, 19 Sep 2017 13:30:51 GMT

If I have a set of values ordered by ID and date, how do I determine the minimum value for each record at from all prior dates? I've tried using RETAIN but don't seem to be obtaining the correct results.

Re: Minimum of prior values

Astounding — Tue, 19 Sep 2017 13:36:31 GMT

Here's an approach that assumes you do NOT want the current value considered when computing the PRIOR minimum:

proc sort data=have;

by id date;

run;

data want;

set have;

by id date;

if first.id then min_val = .;

retain min_val;

output;

min_val = min(min_val, varname);

run;

Re: Minimum of prior values

Doug____ — Tue, 19 Sep 2017 14:43:42 GMT

This method works well for what I'm doing. Any variations for when missing values appear in the series?

Re: Minimum of prior values

Astounding — Tue, 19 Sep 2017 15:01:59 GMT

The MIN function ignores missing values. So I'm assuming you would like to add the possibility that the calculated minimum value comes out missing if one of the incoming values is missing. That's slightly harder but not a great deal different. After sorting:

data want;

set have;

by id date;

retain min_val;

if first.id then do;

min_val = .;

output;

min_val = 1e17;

end;

else output;

if varname < min_val then min_val = varname;

run;