Date:         Tue, 24 Nov 2009 10:53:39 -0500
Reply-To:     Peter Flom <peterflomconsulting@mindspring.com>
Sender:       "SAS(r) Discussion" <SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From:         Peter Flom <peterflomconsulting@MINDSPRING.COM>
Subject:      Re: New York Times Article About SAS Institute and Changing
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8

Dale wrote
>
>>I really don't understand at all the attitude that SAS
>>documentation is difficult to understand.  When compared
>>with STATA and R (for a couple of high profile alternatives),
>>I find that SAS documentation is really easy to navigate.
>>
>>For their statistical routines, SAS provides a basic
>>overview of what the procedure is intended to do, with a
>>very simple example.  That is followed by full syntax,
>>then very detailed documentation of the statistical
>>routines and their assumptions, followed by more examples
>>that elaborate many of the options.
>>
>>Everything you need for a single procedure is collected
>>into one chapter.  Try looking for anything like that
>>with STATA or R.
>>

I don't know STATA, but I completely concur about R.

The help files seem almost designed to be obscure.

Here's the help file for the median function.

<<<<
median                  package:stats                  R Documentation

Median Value

Description:

     Compute the sample median.

Usage:

     median(x, na.rm = FALSE)

Arguments:

       x: an object for which a method has been defined, or a numeric
          vector containing the values whose median is to be computed.

   na.rm: a logical value indicating whether ‘NA’ values should be
          stripped before the computation proceeds.

Details:

     This is a generic function for which methods can be written.
     However, the default method makes use of ‘sort’ and ‘mean’
     from package ‘base’ both of which are generic, and so the
     default method will work for most classes (e.g. ‘"Date"’) for
     which a median is a reasonable concept.

Value:

     The default method returns a length-one object of the same type as
     ‘x’, except when ‘x’ is integer of even length, when the
     result will be double.

     If there are no values or if ‘na.rm = FALSE’ and there are
     ‘NA’ values the result is ‘NA’ of the same type as ‘x’
     (or more generally the result of ‘x[FALSE][NA]’).

References:

     Becker, R. A., Chambers, J. M. and Wilks, A. R. (1988) _The New S
     Language_.  Wadsworth & Brooks/Cole.

See Also:

     ‘quantile’ for general quantiles.

Examples:

     median(1:4)# = 2.5 [even number]
     median(c(1:3,100,1000))# = 3 [odd, robust]
>>>>

Give me SAS Docs any time.

Peter



Peter L. Flom, PhD
Statistical Consultant
Website: www DOT peterflomconsulting DOT com
Writing; http://www.associatedcontent.com/user/582880/peter_flom.html
Twitter:   @peterflom