Designer Graphics - Anatomy of some SAS macros for Statistical Graphics

For statistical graphics--where the goal is to gain insight into the data--SAS/GRAPH procedures alone often do not go far enough in providing the tools for the most effective visual displays. In these cases, other SAS facilities, including the macro language, Annotate, PROC GREPLAY, and SAS/IML provide the basis for constructing custom graphic displays.

This paper, presented at the SUGI 20 Conference, April, 1995, describes some useful graphic displays which cannot be produced by the basic SAS/GRAPH procedures, and shows how they can be constructed by general macro programs, applicable to any dataset. Some examples are drawn from programs described in The SAS System for Statistical Graphics, First Edition.

The paper describes SAS tools for developing custom graphic displays and illustrates the use of these to:

label points and curves
add a data ellipse to a scatterplot
produce graphs by combining separate panels (scatterplot matrix, interaction plot for n-way factorial designs)
design a novel graphic display with SAS/IML graphics (a fourfold display for 2 x 2 x k frequency tables)

To obtain a copy of the paper:

Michael Friendly, Psychology Department
York University, 4700 Keele Street, Toronto ONT Canada M3J 1P3

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