Reputation: 2917
I am trying to find a way to calculate a moving average using SAS do loops. I am having difficulty. I essentially want to calculate a 4 unit moving average.
DATA data;
INPUT a b;
CARDS;
1 2
3 4
5 6
7 8
9 10
11 12
13 14
15 16
17 18
;
run;
data test(drop = i);
set data;
retain c 0;
do i = 1 to _n_-4;
c = (c+a)/4;
end;
run;
proc print data = test;
run;
Upvotes: 0
Views: 3750
Reputation:
Straight from Cody's Collection of Popular Programming Tasks and How to Tackle them.
*Presenting a macro to compute a moving average;
%macro Moving_ave(In_dsn=, /*Input data set name */
Out_dsn=, /*Output data set name */
Var=, /*Variable on which to compute
the average */
Moving=, /* Variable for moving average */
n= /* Number of observations on which
to compute the average */);
data &Out_dsn;
set &In_dsn;
***compute the lags;
_x1 = &Var;
%do i = 1 %to &n - 1;
%let Num = %eval(&i + 1);
_x&Num = lag&i(&Var);
%end;
***if the observation number is greater than or equal to the
number of values needed for the moving average, output;
if _n_ ge &n then do;
&Moving = mean (of _x1 - _x&n);
output;
end;
drop _x:;
run;
%mend Moving_ave;
*Testing the macro;
%moving_Ave(In_dsn=data,
Out_dsn=test,
Var=a,
Moving=Average,
n=4)
Upvotes: 0
Reputation: 1
SAS has a lag() function. What this does is create the lag of the variable it is applied to. SO for example, if your data looked like this:
DATA data;
INPUT a ;
CARDS;
1
2
3
4
5
;
Then the following would create a lag one, two, three etc variable;
data data2;
set data;
a_1=lag(a);
a_2=lag2(a);
a_3=lag3(a);
drop b;
run;
would create the following dataset
a a_1 a_2 a_3
1 . . .
2 1 . .
3 2 1 .
4 3 2 1
etc. Moving averages can be easily calculated from these. Check out http://support.sas.com/documentation/cdl/en/lrdict/64316/HTML/default/viewer.htm#a000212547.htm
(Please note, I did not get a chance to run the codes, so they may have errors.)
Upvotes: 0
Reputation: 63424
One option is to use the merge-ahead:
DATA have;
INPUT a b;
CARDS;
1 2
3 4
5 6
7 8
9 10
11 12
13 14
15 16
17 18
;
run;
data want;
merge have have(firstobs=2 rename=a=a_1) have(firstobs=3 rename=a=a_2) have(firstobs=4 rename=a=a_3);
c = mean(of a:);
run;
Merge the data to itself, each time the merged dataset advancing one - so the 2nd starts with 2, third starts with 3, etc. That gives you all 4 'a' on one line.
Upvotes: 1