Visual Analytics: Ability to enter aggregated measures into new aggregations

[CameronF]

Currently VA doesn't allow users to use existing aggregated measures when creating new ones (i.e. it cannot perform an aggregation on an aggregation). The only solution is to perform these calculations prior to uploading the data to LASR, which can be prohibitively resource intensive when dealing with a large number of possible variable combinations.

This feature would give designers much more control when creating new measures within VA and provide workarounds for many complex data requests.

[ballardw]

Which further aggregations would you like to do using an existing aggregation?

[CameronF]

For instance, I recently tried to emulate proc surveymeans' standard error calculation (VA's SE operation uses proc means). To do this, you need to be able to find the mean of the column, subtract this mean from each observation, and then sum those differences.

The mean for a column can be created as a new aggregated measure, but when then trying to use it in the second aggregation (sum of observations - mean), VA returns an error along the lines of 'unexpected variable type - expecting a measure rather than an aggregated measure'. I don't see why this should be. If I calculate the averages in base SAS prior to uploading the data to LASR, it works fine, but this isn't a viable solution when there are many possible variable combinations. Plus it defeats the point of using VA for on-the-fly calculations.

[itchyeyeballs]

This feature would give VA a capability that it's major competitors all seem to have already.

At the moment I can't find a way to something simple like calculate the percentiles for the sum of groups. i.e. the percentiles for total sales by store.

[AnnaBrown]

Thank you for this idea. It is currently under consideration - we're working on nested aggregations for the next release.

[AnnaBrown]

As of SAS VA 8.3, within your report, you can build nested aggregations (via an aggregate table - see related article) to perform calculations to meet your needs.