How To Calculate Parts Per Minute

[BlayLay]

Hi Everyone,

I'm trying to figure out how to calculate Parts-Per-Minute (PPM) in SAS. I have Quantity (formatted as a number) and Duration (formatted as TIME. with HH:MM:SS) within SAS. I'm trying to create the PPM variable.

In excel, the formula is PPM=Quantity/(Duration*24*60) however, this formula is erroring out in SAS. Below is an example of the table and what PPM should be equal to.

Quantity	Duration	PPM
215	0:10:00	21.50

My data step that is erroring looks like this:

DATA WORK.TEST;
SET WORK.TEST;
PPM = Quantity/(Duration*24*60);
RUN;

And the error message I'm receiving says: "NOTE: Invalid numeric data, Duration=' 0:07:40' , at line 64 column 18."

I'm assuming I need to format the Duration differently, but am not entirely sure. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

[gamotte · Accepted solution]

Hello,

According to the log, Duration column is a character variable. You need to convert it to a numeric time variable :

Duration2=input(Duration,time7.)/60; /* Duration in minutes */

[PaigeMiller]

Your value for duration is not a number, it is a text string, and you can't divide by a text string.

You have to convert this text string to a number

duration1 = input(duration,time7.);

Then you have the a numeric variable which contains the number of seconds in the duration. So to get the PPM, you want to divide by DURATION1/60.