Practical Time Series Analysis Using SAS

Chapter 2: Datetime Variables in SAS

2.1 Datetime Variables

2.2 Output Formats

2.3 Importing Datetime Variables

2.4 Handling Datetime Variables

2.5 Time Series Data Sets

2.1 Datetime Variables

When working with time series data, it is important to completely control the actual points in time for the observations. Our calendar is defined in a very messy, unsystematic way, but graphs and output from analyses should present dates and times in a layout that is easily understood by everyone. This chapter gives a brief presentation of the many facilities (formats, functions, and so on) that SAS provides in order to help you handle date-time observations in the correct way.

In a SAS data set, a date is coded as the number of days since January 1, ...