Producing Frequency Tables Using PROC FREQ

The FREQ procedure is a descriptive procedure as well as a statistical procedure. It produces one-way and n-way frequency tables, and it concisely describes your data by reporting the distribution of variable values. You can use the FREQ procedure to create crosstabulation tables that summarize data for two or more categorical variables by showing the number of observations for each combination of variable values.

Procedure Syntax

The FREQ procedure can include many statements and options for controlling frequency output. For simplicity, let's consider the procedure in its basic form.

General form, basic FREQ procedure:

PROC FREQ <DATA=SAS-data-set>;
RUN;

where SAS-data-set is the name of the data set to be used.

By default, PROC FREQ creates a one-way table with the frequency, percent, cumulative frequency, and cumulative percent of every value of all variables in a data set.

Variable	Frequency	Percent	Cumulative Frequency	Cumulative Percent
Value	Number of observations with the value.	Frequency of the value divided by the total number of observations.	Sum of the frequency counts of the value and all other values listed above it in the table.	Cumulative frequency of the value divided by the total number of observations.

For example, the following FREQ procedure creates a frequency table for each variable in the data set Parts.Widgets. All the unique values are shown for ItemName, LotSize, and Region.

     proc freq data=parts.widgets;
     run;

ItemName	Frequency	Percent	Cumulative Frequency	Cumulative Percent
Bolt	2930	34.52	2930	34.52
Locknut	3106	36.60	6036	71.12
Washer	2451	28.88	8487	100.00

LotSize	Frequency	Percent	Cumulative Frequency	Cumulative Percent
1	4256	50.15	4256	50.15
2	1009	11.89	5265	62.04
3	3222	37.96	8487	100.00

Region	Frequency	Percent	Cumulative Frequency	Cumulative Percent
East	2848	33.56	2848	33.56
North	1355	15.97	4203	49.53
South	1706	20.10	5909	69.63
West	2578	30.38	8487	100.00