Introduction to SAS/IML Studio

What Is SAS/IML Studio?

SAS/IML Studio (formerly known as SAS Stat Studio) is a programming environment for statistical computations and graphics. SAS/IML Studio requires that you have a license for Base SAS® , SAS/STAT® , and SAS/IML® software. SAS/IML Studio runs on a PC in the Microsoft Windows operating environment.

The programming language in SAS/IML Studio, which is called IMLPlus, is an enhanced version of the SAS/IML programming language. The "Plus" part of the name refers to new features that extend the SAS/IML language, including the ability to create and manipulate statistical graphs, to call SAS procedures, and to call functions in the R programming language.

SAS/IML Studio is intended for SAS programmers who want to implment algorithms that are not available in any SAS procedure, but SAS/IML Studio also provides a graphical user interface (GUI) to a number of standard statistical methods. You can use the SAS/IML Studio GUI to do the following:

  • explore data through graphs linked across multiple windows

  • transform data

  • subset data

  • analyze univariate distributions

  • discover structure and features in multivariate data

  • fit and evaluate explanatory models

Figure 1.1 shows the SAS/IML Studio interface with a logistic model for the probability that a passenger survived the 1912 Titanic disaster. The figure shows output from the LOGISTIC procedure and three linked views of the data: a data table, a diagnostic plot that uses the DIFCHISQ statistic to identify observations that do not fit the model well, and a line plot that shows the predicted probability of survival as a function of a passenger’s age, gender, and cabin class (first class, second class, or third class). Observations that are selected in the diagnostic plot are shown as selected in all other (graphical and tabular) views of the data. The shapes and colors of observations are also shared among all views of the data.

Figure 1.1 was created by using only the SAS/IML Studio GUI. Although the GUI provides many tools for analyzing data, SAS/IML Studio is primarily intended for SAS programmers. SAS/IML Studio provides an integrated development environment that enables you to write, debug, and execute programs that combine the following:

  • the flexibility of the SAS/IML matrix language

  • the analytical power of SAS/STAT software

  • the data manipulation capabilities of Base SAS software

  • the dynamically linked graphs of SAS/IML Studio

  • the functions and user-contributed packages of the R language

This book does not require previous knowledge of the SAS/IML language. The emphasis in this book is on the "Plus" part of the IMLPlus language.

Figure 1.1: The SAS/IML Studio Interface

The SAS/IML Studio Interface