SAS: How to Display Median in PROC MEANS

You can use PROC MEANS to calculate summary statistics for variables in SAS.

By default, PROC MEANS does not display the median value as one of the summary statistics but you can use the following syntax to include the median in the output:

proc means data=my_data N Mean Median Std Min Max;
    var points;
run;

This particular example calculates the total number of observations, mean, median, standard deviation, minimum and maximum value for a variable called points.

The following example shows how to use this syntax in practice.

Example: Display Median in PROC MEANS in SAS

Suppose we have the following dataset in SAS that contains information about various basketball players:

/*create dataset*/
data my_data;
    input team $ points assists;
    datalines;
A 10 2
A 17 5
A 17 6
A 18 3
A 15 0
B 10 2
B 14 5
B 13 4
B 29 0
B 25 2
C 12 1
C 30 1
C 34 3
C 12 4
C 11 7
;
run;

/*view dataset*/
proc print data=my_data;

Suppose we use PROC MEANS to calculate summary statistics for the points variable in the dataset:

/*calculate summary statistics for points variable*/
proc means data=my_data;
    var points;
run;

By default, PROC MEANS calculates the following descriptive statistics:

• N: The total number of observations
• Mean: The mean value of points
• Std Dev: The standard deviation of points
• Minimum: The minimum value of points
• Maximum: The maximum value of points

Notice that the median value is not included in the output.

We can use the following syntax to include the median value in the output:

/*calculate summary statistics for points and include median value*/
proc means data=my_data N Mean Median Std Min Max;
    var points;
run;

Notice that the output now includes the median value for the points variable.

We can see that the median value for the points variable turns out to be 15.

Additional Resources

The following tutorials explain how to perform other common tasks in SAS:

How to Calculate Descriptive Statistics in SAS
How to Create Frequency Tables in SAS
How to Calculate Percentiles in SAS
How to Create Pivot Tables in SAS