frequency table when you have many variables

[fatemeh]

Hello all,

Appreciate you helping me find a way to get two by two frequency table apply proc freq. I have many categorical variables, it is time consuming to enter all variables two by two.

[ballardw · Accepted solution]

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@fatemeh wrote:

Hello all,

Appreciate you helping me find a way to get two by two frequency table apply proc freq. I have many categorical variables, it is time consuming to enter all variables two by two.

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The proc freq tables statement allows use of parentheses to create "groups" of variables that get treated similarly.

So

tables (a b c d) *(p d q r); is short hand for all of the pairs of the variables in the first parentheses and all in the second:

a*p a*d a*q a*r b*p b*c b*q b*r etc.

You cal also use variable lists:

tables (a1-a10 ) *(v1-v15). If you have 10 variables that start with a. So that would do a1*v1 a1*v2 ... a1*v15 a2*v1 ... a2*v15 ... a10*v1 .. a10*v15.

you could cross all of the variables using the special list _all_.

Tables _all_* _all_;

but don't expect to get the output quickly with a large data set with lots of variables. 50 variables in the data set means 50*50 tables, or 2500.