Thanks, Joe. But I do not fully understand what you said. My point is: In either case, it would make much more sense that SAS could have replaced the "Missing" by a blank on the first line (the grand mean line).

I might miss something; but this way of SAS presenting data just makes me feel wrong about it.

Max

From: Joe Matise [mailto:snoopy369@gmail.com] Sent: December-21-10 10:12 AM To: bbser 2009 Cc: SAS-L@listserv.uga.edu Subject: Re: what's wrong with proc means?

The _TYPE_ 0 line is the summary line. You are seeing both TYPE=chol and TYPE=(), which is the overall summary. If you want to eliminate it, you can use the various WAYs options, or specify the TYPEs directly.

-Joe

On Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 8:58 AM, bbser 2009 <bbser2009@gmail.com> wrote:

Greetings!

Running the code below, I ended up with the output data set like this:

chol _TYPE_ _FREQ_ ... Missing 0 11 Low 1 6 High 1 5

Notice the "grand mean" line starts with "Missing". Why?

If you change the class statement in the proc means below to this one:

class chol/missing;

Then there are two lines led by "Missing" like below. Why again?

chol _TYPE_ _FREQ_ ... Missing 0 15 Missing 1 4 Low 1 6 High 1 5

Thank you very much.

Max

---------- code -------------------

data blood; input subject rbc wbc chol; cards; 1 7.4 7710 258 2 4.7 6560 . 3 7.53 5690 184 4 6.85 6680 . 5 7.72 . 187 6 3.69 6140 142 7 4.78 6550 290 8 4.96 5200 151 9 5.66 . 311 10 5.55 7710 . 11 5.62 . 152 12 5.85 7410 241 13 4.37 5780 . 14 6.94 5590 152 15 6.03 6520 217 ; *proc print data=blood; *run;

proc format; value chol_group low -< 200 = 'Low' 200 - high = 'High' .="Missing"; run;

title "proc means, output data set, class Chol/missing;"; proc means data=blood mean maxdec=1 noprint; class Chol; format Chol chol_group.; var RBC WBC; output out=temp mean= / autoname; run;

proc print data=temp noobs; run;