SAS Visual Analytics: Path analysis - Illustration

[Julia_B]

Hey,

in order to explore pathes of patients, I am using Path Analysis in SAS Visual Analytics.

As shown in the following picture, the differnt paths are intersecting. However, I am wondering, how you can swith the Illustration, so that the most commonly used path is in one straight line. With Focus on the specific example, VAV would be a rather straight line, intersecting with the other Events.

Does anybody know if there is a possibility to set the Options to receive the respective results?

Thank you,

Julia

[FalkoSchulz]

Hi Julia - 

Unfortunately I don't think the underlying Sankey diagram can do that. As soon as you have one or more cross links (or exit paths) to another event - it's the nature of this particular diagram to curve accordingly. I could be wrong - but it seems the curvature is mainly driven by the 'A..' event in the beginning - as it requires space to render. You may have noticed the rather straight line for VAV towards the end. I'm not sure what this event is about - but if it isn't important in your context, you could right-click on the visual and add a related path filter to exclude it. 

But I will also forward this example to our graph rendering team and see whether this can be improved in future. Maybe paths with higher weight could take precedence when rending to prevent unnecessary curvature. 

One last quick note - your example below has many repetitive events along the path. You may be able to take advantage of the 'compress' option (right hand options panel) which would try to reduce the overall path length and may represent the event order better.

Regards, Falko