How to chart "Percent of SubTotal" , SAS Visual Analytics

[mark1]

We have a number of columns detailing certain characteristics of our clients and I need to see how the proportions of these groups change over time. Using the "percent of total" option in VA gives the percent of each group across all years, but this needs to be subgrouped into each year.

 I know  I can put indicator columns into the data, but there are up to 15 different characteristics (and hence columns) , with up to 10 levels in each - this equates to a lot of indicator columns (and we quite a number of different tables we need to do this in). The "Percent of SubTotals" option works in this regard in a crosstab, but not in a chart (e.g. bar or line chart). Is there an alternative way of doing this directly within VA?

For Example (dummy data - yes, I'm in Australia):

Year	state
2010	nsw
2010	qld
2010	qld
2011	qld
2011	nsw
2011	nsw
2012	qld
2012	nsw
2012	nsw
2012	nsw

Currently, when charted using "Percent of Total", we will get the follwoing results (on a chart though) because it calculates the percent of OVERALL total, rather than subgrouping across the Year AND State:

2010	nsw	10%
	qld	20%
2011	nsw	20%
	qld	10%
2012	nsw	30%
	qld	10%

What I need (on a chart) is:

2010	nsw	33%
	qld	66%
2011	nsw	66%
	qld	33%
2012	nsw	75%
	qld	25%

I have made a crosstab and created a "Percent of SubTotals", but this measure is not allowed a chart within VA atm, and it won't correctly split across the Year as category and State as group (or vice-versa).

Hope this makes sense.

We are on SAS Visual Analytics designer version 7.1

Thanks.

[MichelleHomes · Accepted solution]

What kind of bar chart are you trying to do? If it is a stacked bar chart you might find the "normalize groups to 100%" option useful as described at https://communities.sas.com/t5/SAS-Visual-Analytics/100-Stacked-Bar-Charts/m-p/153329#M602

Kind Regards,

Michelle

[mark1]

Thanks for the quick reply Michelle.

To be honest, I forgot about the normalise groups, and while this works, when the number of levels increases, it does make it a little more difficult to see trends over time. Ultimately I guess I'd like to see the same thing but in a line chart.

I think it will be a matter of indicators for at least some of the variables, as some of the proportions are quite low, and these are obviously the ones we are most interested in. With stacked barcharts or line charts, these tend to get lost. It may just be a matter of "focus" and finetuning where and what we want to look at.

Thanks again