I tried the combination of your and Sanjay's answers as you suggested and it worked well.  Many thanks to both you and Sanjay for your advise. Den ... View more

And system option leftmargin= topmargin= rightmargin= rightmargin= would help you a little bit. Ksharp ... View more

I got it sorted. In the end I had to create an extra column for the (%) and shorten the space between the count value and the (%) value. Thanks ... View more

You can genralize the macro even more by passing the parameters of the RAND function into the macro. Such as: %macro create_random_sample ( sample_size, distribution_parameters ); * strip the quotes from the distribution name; %let distribution = %sysfunc( compress( %scan( &distribution_parameters, 1, %str(,) ), %str(%') )); data &distribution; do until ( id = &sample_size ); id + 1; dist_var = rand( &distribution_parameters ); output; end; run; %mend; %create_random_sample ( 100, %str('normal', 0, 1) ); %create_random_sample ( 100, %str('t', 4) ); %create_random_sample ( 100, 'logn' ); %create_random_sample ( 100, %str('poisson', 6.1) ); %create_random_sample ( 100, %str('binom', .75, 10) ); ... View more

I don’t think that I completely understand what you’re trying to do. Specifically, what conditional probabilities are you trying to estimate? In general, the conditional events could be placed into the proc sql statement in a where clause. Here is an example of a macro that might be used to estimate some conditional probabilities: [pre] data test; input id $ cough headache vomiting fever; datalines; 1 1 0 1 1 2 0 1 0 0 3 0 0 0 1 4 1 1 0 1 ; run; %macro findprob(event, condition); proc sql noprint; select avg(&event) into:prob from test %if %bquote(&condition) ne %then where &condition; ; quit; %if %bquote(&condition) ne %then %let condition = %str( )given &condition; %let prob=&prob; %put The probability of &event&condition is &prob..; %mend; options nonotes; %findprob(cough) %findprob(cough, vomiting) %findprob(cough and headache) %findprob(cough, headache and fever) %findprob(cough and fever, not vomiting) %findprob(fever, cough or headache) [/pre] The following appears on the log when the program is run: [pre] 396 %findprob(cough) The probability of cough is 0.5. 397 %findprob(cough, vomiting) The probability of cough given vomiting is 1. 398 %findprob(cough and headache) The probability of cough and headache is 0.25. 399 %findprob(cough, headache and fever) The probability of cough given headache and fever is 1. 400 %findprob(cough and fever, not vomiting) The probability of cough and fever given not vomiting is 0.333333. 401 %findprob(fever, cough or headache) The probability of fever given cough or headache is 0.666667. [/pre] ... View more

Many thanks to data _null_ for the response to my original question. This worked perfectly! ... View more