Much Faster Bootstraps Using SAS®

Abstract

Seven bootstrap algorithms coded in SAS® are compared. The fastest (“OPDY”), which uses no modules beyond Base SAS®, achieves speed increases almost two orders of magnitude faster (over 80x faster) than the relevant "built-in” SAS® procedure (Proc SurveySelect). It is even much faster than hashing, but unlike hashing it requires virtually no storage space, and its memory usage efficiency allows it to execute bootstraps on input datasets larger (sometimes by orders of magnitude) than the largest a hash table can use before aborting. This makes OPDY arguably the only truly scalable bootstrap algorithm in SAS®.

Keywords: Bootstrap, SAS, Scalable, Hashing, Sampling, with Replacement

JEL Classification: C13, C14, C63, C88