You can use the MAX function in SAS to find the largest value in a list of values.

Here are the two most common ways to use this function:

Method 1: Find Max Value of One Column in Dataset

proc sql;
    select max(var1)
    from my_data;
quit;

Method 2: Find Max Value of One Column Grouped by Another Column in Dataset

proc sql;
    select var2, max(var1)
    from my_data;
    group by var2;
quit;

The following examples show how to use each method with the following dataset in SAS:

/*create dataset*/
data my_data;
    input team $ points;
    datalines;
A 12
A 14
A 19
A 23
A 20
A 11
A 14
B 20
B 21
B 29
B 14
B 19
B 17
B 30
;
run;

/*view dataset*/
proc printdata=my_data;

Note: The MAX function automatically ignores missing values when calculating the max value of a list.

Example 1: Find Max Value of One Column in Dataset

The following code shows how to calculate the max value in the points column of the dataset:

/*calculate max value of points*/
proc sql;
    select max(points)
    from my_data;
quit;

We can see that proc sql returns a table with a value of 30.

This represents the max value in the points column.

Example 2: Find Max Value of One Column Grouped by Another Column

/*calculate max value of points grouped by team*/
proc sql;
    select team, max(points)
    from my_data;
    group by team;
quit;

From the output we can see:

• The max points value for team A is 11.
• The max points value for team B is 14.

Note: You can find the complete documentation for the MAX function in SAS .

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