Graphically Speaking

Dashboard graphs revisited

Sanjay Matange — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 05:07:00 +0000

Here is the promised follow up on the Dashboard graph. In the previous article, I posted the code to create a panel of bullet KPIs displaying three different metrics. For each KPI, I used 5 columns of data which resulted in a wide and inconvenient structure. A more convenient data structure is [...]

Dashboard graphs

Sanjay Matange — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 05:29:33 +0000

In this blog we have been discussing graphs useful for analysis of data for many domains such as clinical research, forecasting and more. SG Procedures and GTL are particularly suited for these use cases. So, when I came upon a dashboard image from Steven Few's Visual Business Intelligence blog, showing the [...]

Distribution of Maximum LFT by Treatment

Sanjay Matange — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 05:07:45 +0000

The graph showing the distribution of the maximum liver function test values by treatment for all participants in a study is commonly used for the analysis of safety data in clinical trials. The data is often structured in multiple columns (one per treatment) as below on the left, or grouped by [...]

Beer, diapers and heat map

Sanjay Matange — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 05:04:47 +0000

The parable of beer and diapers is often related when teaching data mining techniques. Whether fact or fiction, a Heat Map is useful to view the claimed associations. A co-worker recently enquired about possible ways to display associations or dependency between variables. One option is to show the dependency as a node [...]

SG Procedures Book Samples: Adverse Event Timeline

Sanjay Matange — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 05:07:31 +0000

Here is the second installment of sample graphs from the SG Procedures book - The Adverse Event Timeline. This is a graph commonly used in patient profiles for clinical trials where we track the progress of a patient through a hospitalization event, tracking the dates and severity of the adverse events. The [...]

Comparative density plots

Sanjay Matange — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 05:15:01 +0000

Recently a user posted a question on the SAS/GRAPH and ODS Graphics Communities page on how to plot the normal density curves for two classification levels in the same graph. We have often seen examples of a distribution plot of one variable using a histogram with normal and kernel density curves. Here is a simple example: Code Snippet: [...]

SG Procedures Book Samples: Forest Plot

Sanjay Matange — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 15:44:55 +0000

In December of last year, the book "Statistical Graphics Procedures by Example" co-authored by Dan Heath and I was published. On the back cover, it proclaims "Free Code on the Web". Now, who can resist such an offer? Since most of the examples in the book have very short syntax, [...]

A (tool)tip for band plots

Dan Heath — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 05:04:17 +0000

Recently, I had a discussion with a user concerning the volume of imagemap data generated for an interactive, web-based visual contain a large number of graphs. The large amount of imagemap data was causing problems with the current version of their web browser. The graphs consisted of either bar charts [...]

Nested graphs

Sanjay Matange — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 05:30:01 +0000

Here are a couple of bar charts showing the city mileage of cars by Type and Origin using the SGPLOT procedure from the sashelp.cars dataset. title 'Vehicle Mileage by Type'; proc sgplot data=cars; format mpg_city 4.1; vbar type / response=mpg_city stat=mean datalabel; xaxis display=(nolabel); run; title 'Counts by Country'; proc sgplot [...]

Timeseries plots with regimes

Sanjay Matange — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 05:29:42 +0000

Recently we discussed the features of the Shiller Graph, showing long term housing values in the USA. To understand the features necesary in the SGPLOT procedure to create such graph easily, it was useful to see how far we can go using GTL as released with SAS 9.2(M3). I got the data Shiller Housing index data [...]