The HPBNET Procedure

Consider a study of the analgesic effects of treatments on elderly patients who have neuralgia. Two test treatments and a placebo are compared. The response variable is whether the patient reported pain or not. Researchers recorded the age and gender of 60 patients and the duration of complaint before the treatment began. The following DATA step creates the data set Neuralgia:

    Data Neuralgia;
       input Treatment $ Sex $ Age Duration Pain $ @@;
       datalines;
    P  F  68   1  No   B  M  74  16  No  P  F  67  30  No
    P  M  66  26  Yes  B  F  67  28  No  B  F  77  16  No
    A  F  71  12  No   B  F  72  50  No  B  F  76   9  Yes
    A  M  71  17  Yes  A  F  63  27  No  A  F  69  18  Yes
    B  F  66  12  No   A  M  62  42  No  P  F  64   1  Yes
    A  F  64  17  No   P  M  74   4  No  A  F  72  25  No
    P  M  70   1  Yes  B  M  66  19  No  B  M  59  29  No
    A  F  64  30  No   A  M  70  28  No  A  M  69   1  No
    B  F  78   1  No   P  M  83   1  Yes B  F  69  42  No
    B  M  75  30  Yes  P  M  77  29  Yes P  F  79  20  Yes
    A  M  70  12  No   A  F  69  12  No  B  F  65  14  No
    B  M  70   1  No   B  M  67  23  No  A  M  76  25  Yes
    P  M  78  12  Yes  B  M  77   1  Yes B  F  69  24  No
    P  M  66   4  Yes  P  F  65  29  No  P  M  60  26  Yes
    A  M  78  15  Yes  B  M  75  21  Yes A  F  67  11  No
    P  F  72  27  No   P  F  70  13  Yes A  M  75   6  Yes
    B  F  65   7  No   P  F  68  27  Yes P  M  68  11  Yes
    P  M  67  17  Yes  B  M  70  22  No  A  M  65  15  No
    P  F  67   1  Yes  A  M  67  10  No  P  F  72  11  Yes
    A  F  74   1  No   B  M  80  21  Yes A  F  69   3  No
    ;

The Neuralgia data set contains five variables: Treatment, Sex, Age, Duration, and Pain. The last variable, Pain, is the target variable. Pain=Yes indicates that the patient felt pain, and Pain=No indicates no pain. The variable Treatment is a nominal variable that has three levels: A and B represent the two test treatments, and P represents the placebo treatment. The gender of the patients is indicated by the nominal variable Sex. The variable Age is the age of the patients, in years, when treatment began. The duration of complaint, in months, before the treatment began is indicated by the variable Duration.