Increase values for random number of observations

[Sean_OConnor]

Folks,

I wonder could anyone provide some guidance for the following query, please?

I have a dataset for 10,000 households on income. 

I would like to see the impact of an increase in income of ranging between 500-1000 for a random 200 households can have on headline figures such as the percentage of the sample at risk of poverty. 

Would anyone know how the best way to write a command to increase a variable between 500-1000 for a random 200 observations?

Any help would be most welcome.

Kind regards,

Sean 

[RW9]

Well, you can use the random number generator:

https://blogs.sas.com/content/iml/2011/08/24/how-to-generate-random-numbers-in-sas.html

Something like:

data A;
call streaminit(123);       /* set random number seed */
do i = 1 to 200;
   u = rand("Uniform") * 10000;     
   output;
end;
run;

This would give you 200 random observation numbers.  Merge this to your data based on u=_nobs_ (will need an actual variable), then apply an if - note that this is just pseudocode, I haven't time to test anything right now:

data want;
  merge have (in=a) a (in=b);
  by u;
  if b then do;
    /* set addition here */
  end;
run;
  

[Astounding]

This can be done in 1 step, but the statistical theory proving that this is in fact a random selection is complex.

data want;

set have nobs=denominator;

retain numerator 200;

if ranuni(12345) < numerator / denominator then do;

   value = value + 500;  /* how do you know how much to add?? */

   numerator = numerator - 1;

end;

denominator = denominator - 1;

run;

[TomKari]

Rick Wicklin discusses using random number generators in a number of places. Here's an SGF paper that discusses the topic.

Tom

https://www.lexjansen.com/scsug/2016/SAS-Ten-Tips.pdf