Date:         Wed, 8 Dec 1999 11:01:51 -0800
Reply-To:     David Cassell <cassell@MERCURY.COR.EPA.GOV>
Sender:       "SAS(r) Discussion" <SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From:         David Cassell <cassell@MERCURY.COR.EPA.GOV>
Organization: OAO Corp.
Subject:      Re: Free alternatives to Base/SAS
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

Walt Smith wrote:

[okay, this is me, unattributed]
> > Definitely.  For Perl one uses the modules.  So instead of
> > writing the six lines to get the quartiles out of proc univariate
> > and into another dataset, one uses two lines to get the
> > quartiles out of the Statistics::Descriptive module and into
> > an array.
>
> I could be wrong - I'm just learning Perl, but have been doing SAS for
> 16 years - but I'd challenge any Perler to do the equivalent of:
>
> proc arima data=datalib.mydata;
>    identify var=y(1)(12) crosscor=(x1(1)(12));
>    estimate p=1 q=1 input=(2$(1,3)x1);
>    forecast id=date interval=month out=fcstdata lead=36;
> run;

Not in 5 lines, but one can do this with modules like PDL
[which is more like PROC IML than PROC ARIMA actually].

But I prefer SAS for canned procedures.  OTOH, SAS is a lot
less helpful than Perl for something like the sample
variance of a non-trivial probability-based sample design,
for example a spatially-hierarchical randomization (Don
Stevens, 1998).  And variances are one of the areas in which
we expect SAS to excel.

> proc gplot data=fcstdata;
>    plot forecast*date y*date / overlay frame grid;
> run;

If you want superior graphical capabilities, look at some of
the available Perl modules, like:
PerlMagick
PNGgraph
GIFgraph
GD
Tk
...

But graphics is not one of the strong points of SAS, other
than what can be generated by the PROCs.

> And thats just the simple stuff!!

Of course, these are the strengths of SAS, and supposedly
the weaknesses of general programming languages like Perl
[or Java, or Python, or whatever].  You seem to have missed
the point of my discussion.

David
--
David Cassell, OAO                     cassell@mail.cor.epa.gov
Senior computing specialist
mathematical statistician