What is SAS?

Best known as a statistical analysis system, SAS is now used in business, research, education and social services. SAS is a very powerful system that includes a programming language, enormous library of statistical features, hundreds of built-in functions, macro capability, reporting and graphics. The most common uses you will find for SAS are:

1. Data input and data management. This includes cleaning up data entry errors, calculating scores, creating new variables and selecting a subset of records and variables needed for a given project.
2. Reporting on data. SAS produces standard reports very easily. Customized reports can be created with a little effort. Graph-N-GO can be used to quickly and easy create most basic graphs. SAS/GRAPH (some programming required) produces an amazing variety of graphs.
3. Statistics of all types. From descriptive statistics to maximum likelihood methods, SAS has a packaged procedure for nearly every type of statistical technique. The code is generally fairly simple for someone with basic statistical knowledge. For example, to test whether faculty or students scored higher on a task that gave subjects two minutes to respond to 50 general knowledge questions, the following code is all that is necessary:

   Proc ttest ;
   Class status ;
   Var response;

Full support for SAS is provided by the USC Customer Support Center. Any member of the USC community, staff, faculty or students, can:

• Register for free introductory and advanced classes,
• Request consulting support for data management and statistical analysis,
and
• Purchase software at greatly discounted prices.

Last updated: Monday, July 13, 2009, 16:46PM PDT