Order that variables appear in plot output of proc freq - sas

Question

I have created a frequency plot using the plot option in proc freq. However, I am not able to order that I want. I have categories of '5 to 10 weeks' 'Greater than 25 weeks', '10 to 15 weeks', '15 to 20 weeks'. I want them to go in the logical order of increasing weeks but I'm not sure how to do that. I tried using the order option but nothing seemed to fix that.
A possible solution would be to code the order I want as values of 1-5, order them using the order= option and then have a label for 1-5. But I'm not sure if that's possible.
Tried the order= option, however, that didn't fix the issue.
I want the bins to show up as 'less then 5 weeks' '5 to 10 weeks' '10 to 15 weeks' '15 to 20 weeks' '20 to 25 weeks' 'greater then 25 weeks'

Answer 1

When the Proc FREQ plot displays the tabled variables values in alphabetic order, and the plot option order= is not specified you have the following scenario
variable is character
display order is default (INTERNAL)
Note: Other frequency plotting techniques, such a SGPLOT VBAR recognize midpoint axis specification that can control the explicit order the character values appear. Proc FREQ does not have a plot option for mxaxis.
You are correct in presuming an inverse map (or remap, or unmap) from label to a desired ordered value is essential. The are two main ways to remap
custom format to map label to a character value (via PUT)
custom informat to map label to a numeric value (via INPUT)
Once you have remapped the labels to a value, you need a second custom format to map the values back to the original labels.
Example:
* format to map unmapped labels back to original labels;
proc format;
value category
1 = 'Less than 5 weeks'
2 = '5 to 10 weeks'
3 = '10 to 15 weeks'
4 = '15 to 20 weeks'
5 = '20 to 25 weeks'
6 = 'Greater than 25 weeks'
;
* informat to unmap labels to numeric with desired freq plot order;
invalue category_to_num
'Less than 5 weeks' = 1
'5 to 10 weeks' = 2
'10 to 15 weeks' = 3
'15 to 20 weeks' = 4
'20 to 25 weeks' = 5
'Greater than 25 weeks' = 6
;
* generate sample data;
data have;
do itemid = 1 to 500;
cat_num = rantbl(123,0.05,0.35,0.25,0.15,0.07); * for demonstration purposes;
cat_char = put(cat_num, category.); * your actual category values;
output;
end;
run;
* demonstration: numeric category (unformatted) goes ascending internal order;
proc freq data=have;
table cat_num / plots=freqplot(scale=percent) ;
run;
* demonstration: numeric category (formatted) in desired order with desired category text;
proc freq data=have;
table cat_num / plots=freqplot(scale=percent) ;
format cat_num category.;
run;
* your original plot showing character values being ordered alphabetically
* (as is expected from default order=internal);
proc freq data=have;
table cat_char / plots=freqplot(scale=percent) ;
run;
* unmap the category texts to numeric values that are ordered as desired;
data have_remap;
set have;
cat_numX = input(cat_char, category_to_num.);
run;
* table the numeric values computed during unmap, using format to display
* the desired category texts;
proc freq data=have_remap;
table cat_numX / plots=freqplot(scale=percent) ; * <-- cat_numX ;
format cat_numX category.; * <-- format ;
run;