If the var statement is omitted, statistics are produced for all variables in the data set. The data set must be sorted prior by the same groups using the sort procedure prior to the means procedure. The Freq procedure produces frequency tables. The data must be sorted by the specified grouping variables prior to running the frequencies procedure. It is useful to visualize the distribution of a variable by producing a bar chart of frequency counts.
Bar charts can display counts for both categorical and continuous data.
The vbar statement specifies that counts are displayed as vertical bars. An hbar statement specifiying horizontal bars may be used instead. SAS automatically produces 20 equally spaced intervals for the charted variable. Another way of specifying how many bars to print is to include the midpoints option on the vbar or hbar statement. The univariate procedure provides greater detail on the distribution of a variable than any other other types of procedures that analyze univariate data.