rand function issue

[DakotaBison]

Hi all,

I am trying to generate a table with 100 observations, one variable. This is a discrete variable with 4 levels so I used this code below and everything is fine.

data BMI (drop = i) ;

     array prob [4]    (0.01, 0.1, 0.26, 0.63);

     call streaminit(1234);

     do i = 1 to 100;

          BMI = rand("Table", of prob

);

     output;

end;

run;

quit;

However, what I really want is this to store the proportions (0.01, 0.1, 0.26, 0.63) in a matrix variable z, like this below, and then pass that matrix variable via array, prob

into the rand function, as shown below.

proc iml;

  use CHIS.RBMI_Freq;

  read all var {PERCENT} into XBMI ;

  Z = ((XBMI[1:4,])*.01);

print Z;

run;

data BMI (drop = i) ;

     array prob

   Z ;

     call streaminit(1234);

     do i = 1 to 100;

          BMI = rand("Table", of prob

);

     output;

end;

run;

quit;

When I do this I get an error   Argument 2 to function RAND('Table',.) at line 822 column 15 is invalid.

I need help. Thanks in advance.

[ballardw]

I don't work much with IML but I would think you could do that as a row operation in IML. Data steo is, as error says, not going to accept that syntax the way you want as Z as called will create a single variable Z which is missing.I don't know if you could instead of Print Z create a macro variable in a format that looks like the values in the first example.

BTW if you don't want to keep adding Drop i statements use Do _i_= for your loops. The paired underscores tell SAS to treat as a temporary variable and it is automatically dropped from the output.