Question

I have this problem, but in SAS. To use the example provided in this question, I have 5 columns of names (name_1, name_2, etc.), and want to output a list in which the names are listed in descending order of frequency:

John     502
Robert   388
William  387
...
...       1

I took the answer to the question referenced above, and surrounded it with “proc sql;” and “quit;”:

proc sql;
create table freqs as
SELECT name, COUNT(1)
FROM (           SELECT name_1 AS name FROM mytable
     UNION ALL SELECT name_2 AS name FROM mytable
     UNION ALL SELECT name_3 AS name FROM mytable
     UNION ALL SELECT name_4 AS name FROM mytable
     UNION ALL SELECT name_5 AS name FROM mytable
   ) AS myunion
 GROUP BY name
 ORDER BY COUNT(1) DESC
;
quit;

but am getting:

ERROR: Summary functions are restricted to the SELECT and HAVING clauses only.

I am using SAS 9.2.

Thoughts? Thanks for the help!

Answer 1

You just need to change your ORDER BY expression to reference the second column. I’d also suggest that you assign the COUNT expression result to a SAS variable name (perhaps “freq”):

proc sql; 
   create table freqs as 
   SELECT name
        , COUNT(*) as freq
   FROM (
      SELECT           name_1 AS name FROM mytable
      UNION ALL SELECT name_2 AS name FROM mytable
      UNION ALL SELECT name_3 AS name FROM mytable
      UNION ALL SELECT name_4 AS name FROM mytable
      UNION ALL SELECT name_5 AS name FROM mytable
      ) AS myunion  
   GROUP BY name
   ORDER BY freq DESC;
quit; 

FYI: You can also say ORDER BY 2 DESC to give a relative reference.