Date: Mon, 24 Jun 2002 16:09:43 -0700
Reply-To: Dale McLerran <stringplayer_2@YAHOO.COM>
Sender: "SAS(r) Discussion" <SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From: Dale McLerran <stringplayer_2@YAHOO.COM>
Subject: Re: Why SAS is the best ??
In-Reply-To: <af867j$kn4$1@news.tpi.pl>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Pawel,
This subject comes up regularly on SAS-L. I like SAS for its data
manipulation capabilities. You can operate on larger data volumes
with SAS than you can with most other languages. The syntax of the
data step is much clearer (to me) than the syntax of a lot of other
languages. The different types of merge and set operations along
with joins in SQL cannot be beat by any other language. Also, I
like language which allows batch submission, and SAS is better at
batch submission than many of the other statistical programming
languages. A lot of languages are tailored more for interactive
analysis of smaller datasets. Batch submission is not the intended
form of usages for many statistical programming languages. The SAS
macro language is a powerful tool which allows many difficult
problems to be solved fairly easily.
Still, SAS is not as flexible as many other statistical programming
languages. If you want to code some new algorithm, it can be more
work to implement in SAS. If you have the procedure IML licensed,
you can code just about any algorithm that you desire, but you might
have to do more coding than you would have to with, say, S-plus.
Matrix operations are not integrated with the rest of the language
in the way that they are in S-plus or Stata. SAS cannot perform
operations on imaginary numbers, which some other languages can.
I have not yet encountered a situation where that was of concern to
me. But it is a limitation on the part of SAS.
These are just a few thoughts on what is good and what is not so
good about SAS. Much more could be said.
Dale
--- Pawel Manowiecki <pawel.manowiecki@WP.PL> wrote:
> My questions are today simple :)
> Tell me.
> Why do you think SAS is the best / or is better then other
> stat-software ?
> What for you are using it ?
>
> Tnx,
> Pawel Manowiecki
> pawel.manowiecki@wp.pl
> Student
> Department of Economics
> Warsaw University
> Poland
=====
---------------------------------------
Dale McLerran
Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center
mailto: dmclerra@fhcrc.org
Ph: (206) 667-2926
Fax: (206) 667-5977
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