VISUAL DATA INSIGHTS USING SAS ODS GRAPHICS : a guide to communication-effective data... visualization

SAS ODS graphics users will learn in this book how to visually understand and communicate the significance of data to deliver images for quick and easy insight, with precise numbers. Many charts or plots require the viewer to run the eye from a bar end or plot point to some point on an axis, and then to interpolate between tick marks to estimate the value. Some design choices can lead to wrong conclusions or mistaken impressions. Graphic software relies on defaults to deliver something if you make a minimal effort, but that something is not likely to be exactly what you want. Visual Data Insights Using SAS ODS Graphics provides examples using experience-based design principles. It presents examples of bar charts, pie charts, and trend lines or time series plots, the graph types commonly used in business, other organizations, and the media for visual insight into data. Newer graphs are also included: dot plots, needle plots, waterfall charts, butterfly charts, heat maps, bubble plots, step plots, high-low plots, and donut charts. In addition, there are basic tools of statistics: scatter plots, box plots, histograms, fit and confidence plots, and distributions. Author LeRoy Bessler introduces unique creations, including sparsely annotated time series, maximally informative bar charts, better box plots, histograms based on interesting atypical rationales, and much more. The examples use SAS sample data sets as input. Any SAS user can experiment with the code presented to see what else is possible, or adapt it to repurpose the design and apply it with a customized version of that code. What You’ll Learn Create graphs that are easily and quickly interpreted, and without ambiguity Supply precise data values that are correct on the graph and correctly associated with the graphic visual elements Take advantage of widely applicable (but not necessarily available elsewhere) design examples Avoid bad practices that are encouraged by poor examples elsewhere Get past sub-optimal designs and results that are built into software defaults Take advantage of less familiar capabilities available in the software Who This Book Is For SAS software users who want to understand their data and/or visually deliver their results Contents About the Author About the Technical Reviewer Acknowledgments Introduction Part I: Design Principles Chapter 1: Principles of Communication-Effective Graphic Design Be Brief, Clear, Picturesque, and Accurate 3D Pie Charts Are Always Misleading 3D Bar Charts Are Anticommunicative Graphs Need Image and Precise Numbers A Usable Stacked Bar Chart Requires an Axis Table to Deliver the Precise Values A Clustered Horizontal Bar Chart Is Better Than a Stacked Bar Chart For Bar Charts, Horizontal Is Usually Better For a Line Plot with Discrete X Values, an X Axis Table Is an Alternative to Annotation Curve Labels Eliminate the Need for a Legend Show Them What’s Important Show Them What’s Important with Ranking Show Them What’s Important with Subsetting Three Ways to Do Ranked Subsetting Simplicity Accelerates and Facilitates Visual Insights into Data A Sparse Graph Is Easily and Quickly Interpreted Inform the Viewer About the Key Data Points of a Multi-line Overlay Plot For a Trend, Usually Start the Y Axis at Zero For a Bar Chart, Unless There Are Negative Values, Always Start the Value Axis at Zero Use Maximally Simple Design to Focus on What’s Important Tell Them What’s Important with a Headline A Graph Footnote Does Not Need to Be Small Assure Text Readability Font Size and Font Weight Affect Readability Keep Text Horizontal Never Use Backgrounds—They Impair Readability Readability Depends on Display Situation A Graph Can Have a Companion Table Web Graphs Include Data Tips (a.k.a. Mouseover Text) A Web Graph Can Have a Companion Hyperlinked Excel Table A Web Graph Should Not Require Scrolling Summary Chapter 2: Principles of Communication-Effective Use of Color Avoid Red and Green for “Bad Versus Good” Color-Coding Data with a Multiple Shades of the Same Hue Use Color to Communicate, Not to Decorate Use of Color Can Confuse Establish and Use a Personal Color Palette for Consistency Beware of Color Names Benefits of Boring Black and White Color Requires Sufficient Mass to Be Distinguishable Never Use Background Images or Textured or Color Gradient Backgrounds Use a Plain Solid Color Background Provide High Contrast Between Text Color and Background Color Pie Charts and Color Emphasis Options for Colorless Text Choosing the Right Colors A Light Color Can Be the Right Color Uncolor Might Be the Right Color “Transparent” Color As the Right Color Color Differs on Different Media Color Systems RGB Colors HLS Colors Examples of Good Color Use Summary Part II: Widely Applicable Examples You Can Use Chapter 3: Introduction to SAS ODS Graphics Outer Structure of ODS Graphics Code in Examples Inner Structure of ODS Graphics Code Text Attributes Control in ODS Graphics Measurement Units Borders From Defaults Through Customization for a Simple Scatter Plot Control of Text Attributes with a Custom ODS Style For More Introduction and Added Information Summary Chapter 4: Bar Charts, Butterfly Charts, Waterfall Charts, Dot Plots, Needle Plots, Area Bar Charts, Text Graphs, and Line Charts: Charts for Categorical Data Present the Categories in Your Charts and Plots in Ranked Order Provide Precise Numbers for Your Charts and Plots for Categorical Data Bar Charts Bar Chart Types General Remarks About Code Used Input Data and Discrete Attribute Map for the Examples Horizontal Bar Charts Default Horizontal Bar Chart Easy Communication Effectiveness Improvements for a Horizontal Bar Chart Maximally Informative Horizontal Bar Chart—Ranked by Measure of Interest Subsetted Ranked Fully Informative Horizontal Bar Charts Horizontal Charts for One Category Variable and Two Response Variables Dot Plots Vertical Bar Charts Waterfall Chart Needle Plots Single-Needle Needle Plots Review of Tree Chart, Flag Chart, and CrossRoads SignPost Chart and the Alternatives of Pie Chart, Vertical Bar Chart, and Horizontal Bar Chart Area Bar Chart Summary Chapter 5: Pie Charts and Donut Charts General Remarks About Code Used Examples and Methods for Pie Charts A Tour of What You Can Do with Donut Charts What Was Really My First Donut Chart My Latest Donut Charts Summary Chapter 6: Heat Maps General Remarks About Code Used Types of Heat Maps Heat Maps with Character Variables for X and Y Heat Map with Multifunction Annotation and a Categorical Response Variable Heat Maps with a Character Variable for Y and a Numeric Variable for X Heat Map with Character Y Values and Numeric X Values Converted to Character Heat Maps with Both X and Y As Numeric Data So, How Can We Get Some Insight Visually into This Data? Summary Chapter 7: Bubble Plots General Remarks About Code Used Examples and Methods Options Available but Not Used Here Summary Chapter 8: Time Series Plots and Trend Lines General Remarks About Code Used Key Concerns and Methods for Time Series Plots Tools for Time Series Graphs Options for Lines and Markers Special Data Sets Used for Some Time Series Graphs Inspecting and Managing the SASUSER Data Library Time Series One-Line Plots Getting Started Using the ODS Graphics SERIES Statement for a Single-Line Time Series Plot The Most Efficient Time Series Plot: No Plot Line, No Markers, No Axis Lines The Simplest, Yet Most Importantly Informative, Time Series Plot Using a Reference Line in the Time Series Plot Time Series Graphs Can Be Created Without the SERIES Statement Vertical Bar Charts for Time Series Data Needle Plot for Time Series Data Step Plots for Time Series Data Applying Bands to Time Series Plots Time Series Plots Using the HIGHLOW Statement Multi-line Time Series Plots Overlay Plots of Two Response Variables with Different Units by Date Multi-line Overlay Time Series Plots for Data with a Group Variable Overlay Plots for Nearly Sparse Lines Very Long Time Series Plot of Monthly Data Daily Time Series Plots One Month of Time Series Data Single-Line Daily Time Series Plot for a Year Multi-line Monthly Plot for Daily Time Series Data of One Year Adding Value to the Multi-line Plot When Data Labels Are Impossible Adding More Value to the Multi-line Plot Seeing the Big Picture, Seeing It Better in Pieces, Seeing It Differently Summary Part III: Other Features Chapter 9: Graphic Composites with PROC SGPANEL Why Axis Offsets Are Important in PROC SGPANEL Applications How PROC SGPANEL Can Affect Image Dimensions General Remarks About Code Used Input Data for the Examples Included Code Composites of Time Series Plots Panels of Monthly Data Sparse Line Tables and Sparse Line Panels Panels for a Year of Days by Week Composites of Categorical Data Composites of Horizontal Bar Charts Composites of Vertical Bar Charts Composites of Dot Plots Composites of Needle Plots Composites of Scatter Plots Composites with Three Class Variables Summary Chapter 10: Scatter Plots in Composites Using PROC SGSCATTER Image Size Determination General Remarks About Code Used Special Data Requirement for This Chapter PROC SGSCATTER PLOT Versus PROC SGPLOT SCATTER Creating Composites with PROC SGSCATTER Summary Chapter 11: Fits and Confidence Plots General Remarks About Code Used ELLIPSE Fit Statements for PROC SGPLOT (and PROC SGPANEL) Summary Chapter 12: Distributions, Histograms, Box Plots, and Alternative Tools General Remarks About Code Used Box Plots and the HBOX and VBOX Statements The Basic Box Plot Building an Informative Box Plot Comparing the Informative Box Plot, with and Without Outliers Effective Use of the Basic Box Plot Histograms The Basic Histogram A Histogram to Look Deeper The Ultimate Histogram: A Bin for Each (Integer) Value The Significance-Based Histogram: Binning Based on a Rationale The Normality Test Histogram: Seven Bins for Values Within One, Two, and Three Standard Deviations and the Minimum and Maximum The Quantiles Histogram: N Bins with All the Same Number of Observations How to Display the Actual Distribution Image and Precise Numbers: Showing the Actual Distribution and Its Statistics—with Their Locations Density Plots The Normal Distribution and the PDF Function The Normal Distribution As an Overlay to the Real Distribution Putting It All Together: Frequency Distribution, Normal Distribution, and Statistics An Alternative to the VBOX (Vertical Box) Plot Summary Chapter 13: Creating Composites of Graphs, Tables, and Text with ODS LAYOUT Progressive Customization of a Table Created As an Image with ODS PRINTER Direct Customization Without Customized Styles Borders for Tables As Images: Using a Tool That Will Apply a Border to Any Image General-Purpose Macro to Create a Table As an Image Building a Composite with ODS LAYOUT and ODS PRINTER Capturing ODS Objects from SAS Procedure Output As Images Summary Chapter 14: Delivering Precise Numbers and Alternative Views for Graphs Using SAS ODS HTML5 ODS HTML5 Code Basics Custom ODS Styles Used in This Chapter Time Series Data Used in This Chapter Examples More Complex Composites, Using Gridded Versus Absolute Layouts Drill-Down Links to Other Web Pages from Elements of a Web Graph Control of the Web Page Background Color and Graph Transparency (Pink Is Not Recommended) The Web-Enabled Sparse Line Table Summary Chapter 15: Delivering Precise Numbers When Using PROC SGMAP Summary Appendix A About These Three Images For Further Information on SAS ODS Graphics Index SAS ODS graphics users will learn in this book how to visually understand and communicate the significance of data to deliver images for quick and easy insight, with precise numbers. Many charts or plots require the viewer to run the eye from a bar end or plot point to some point on an axis, and then to interpolate between tick marks to estimate the value. Some design choices can lead to wrong conclusions or mistaken impressions. Graphic software relies on defaults to deliver something if you make a minimal effort, but that something is not likely to be exactly what you want. Visual Data Insights Using SAS ODS Graphics provides examples using experience-based design principles. It presents examples of bar charts, pie charts, and trend lines or time series plots, the graph types commonly used in business, other organizations, and the media for visual insight into data. Newer graphs are also included: dot plots, needle plots, waterfall charts, butterfly charts, heat maps, bubble plots, step plots, high-low plots, and donut charts. In addition, there are basic tools of statistics: scatter plots, box plots, histograms, fit and confidence plots, and distributions. Author LeRoy Bessler introduces unique creations, including sparsely annotated time series, maximally informative bar charts, better box plots, histograms based on interesting atypical rationales, and much more.What You’ll Learn• Create graphs that are easily and quickly interpreted, and without ambiguity• Supply precise data values that are correct on the graph and correctly associated with the graphic visual elements• Take advantage of widely applicable (but not necessarily available elsewhere) design examples• Avoid bad practices that are encouraged by poor examples elsewhere• Get past sub-optimal designs and results that are built into software defaults• Take advantage of less familiar capabilities available in the softwareCode at