Information on SAS

This document contains information about using SAS on our system. Some is specific to our implementation, but most is quite general. SAS is a product of SAS Institute Inc., Cary, NC. If you have questions about SAS courses or about how to get help on SAS, please contact SAS directly. These pages provide local information that might be of broader use. Return to U WI Statistics Computing Facilities

SAS on Our Bayes Computer

Note: SAS 6.10 is now available on our bayes computer. To use it, you must add /s/sas/bin to your PATH. This would usually be done in the file ~/.cshrc.local or in ~/.profile, depending on the shell that you use. Here is a possible setup for ~/.cshrc.local: 
	set path = ($path /s/sas/bin)
[Some peculiarities with AFS require SAS calls to use the options as 
        % sas -filelocks none yourfile.sas
This is now automatically performed. If you had set up an alpha.sas alias in your .cshrc.local file, you may now remove it.]

Recent Improvements to SAS

The SAS version 5 (1980s) and 6.0.3 (roughly 1989) manuals (see books below) are adequate for 75% to 90%, respectively, of SAS commands. [Earlier versions should be discarded.] However, many improvements and several important new procedures have been included in the 6.0.7 (roughly 1992) and 6.0.9 (1994-5) versions.

The big new thing in SAS version 6.0.7 is the Insight module. This lets you do exploratory data analysis. 3-d point clouds with rotation. Brushing a value in one window and seeing it highlighted in another dimension. It is much closer to the type of windowing interaction one would like to see. However, many still prefer to use SAS in "batch mode", submitting a file of commands.

Still more improvements are in version 6.0.9, including

There is also a proc glmmod which offers a model-building front end to proc glm which may be of interest as well. We should have 6.0.9 by the end of 1994. These are described in Technical Bulletins P-229 and P-243. Walt Stroup, U NE Lincoln, is writing a book about proc mixed which should be out in 1995.

See also SAS on Our Bayes Computer above.

Books about SAS

There are several recent books about SAS. Milliken & Johnson provides a comprehensive tour of linear models, with a lot of reference to SAS. DiIorio & Hardy seems a good all-around introductory reference. Mason's book also comes well recommended. SAS Institute Inc., Cary, NC, has a wide array of material, some available locally (e.g. at DoIT Showroom & Solutions). They can be ordered via the web from the SAS Publications Catalog. See also SAS Institute Book Descriptions, or subscribe to the NEWDOCNEWS-L listserver at listserv@vm.sas.com. The SAS System for ... books are quite good, and very self-contained. Dedicated researchers should consider the SAS/STAT guide, which has many examples showing the power of the system. The language guide gives an overview and details on the data step, including transformation functions. The intro is not needed; the procedures guide overlaps somewhat with SAS/STAT.

Version 5 manuals can be used for the current release [SAS User's Guide for Basics (#P5603 $24.95) and for Statistics (#P5604 $22.95)], as can manuals for the PC version [Introduction #P5710 $12.95, Language #P5856 $19.95, SAS/STAT #P5639 $25.95]. However, some commands may have changed--be alert!

JMP Interactive System

JMP is an interactive statistical analysis and data exploration system from SAS Institute Inc. It has been available on the Mac for some time now and will soon be out under Windows.

In addition to pull-down graphics, JMP has a nice design component. However, its graphing functions can be very limiting (displaying the data is good but plotting the data for output graphs is poor). There is no "scatter needle" plot option as there is in DeltaGraph. But it is possible to change the axes in the rotating 3-d scatter plot so that the plot appeared the same as it did in DeltaGraph. That way - individual points around the periphery can be easily pinpointed with JMP.

The JMP-L List Server is up! The list is for discussions and reports of interest to JMP users. Subscription is open; discussion is unmoderated. To be added to the list, send an email message to: 
    majordomo@wubios.wustl.edu
with the following one line command/message: 
    subscribe JMP-L
If you have any questions, contact: 
Al Best, Dept of Biostatistics
Box 980032 Medical College of Virginia
Virginia Commonwealth University
Richmond VA 32398-0032
Phone: 804-828-9824

SAS Contacts

Software Sales at DoIT handles campus licensing for SAS. The contact person is David Carter (2-9560, fax 2-4679 or carter@doit.wisc.edu).

E-mail Addresses for SAS Institute

To contact SAS Institute via electronic mail, send your question, request, or suggestion to the appropriate address listed below. If you have a comment or suggestion about our Worldwide Web site, please use the online comment form. (Note: your viewer must support forms to submit an online comment) 
World Wide Web:                 http://www.sas.com/

Corporate Communications:       corpcom@unx.sas.com
Education:                      sasedu@vm.sas.com
European Offices:               eurwww@mvs.sas.com
Publications:                   pub@unx.sas.com
Software Sales and Marketing:   software@unx.sas.com
Suggestions:                    suggest@unx.sas.com
Corporate headquaters number is 919-677-8000 and the Chicago regional office (closest one) number is 312-819-6800.
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Last modified: Mon Feb 8 15:19:41 1999 by Brian Yandell Sat Apr 15 17:49:42 1995 by Stat Www (statwww@stat.wisc.edu)