STAT 362: Introduction to Computer Statistical Packages

Fall, 2001

Instructor: James Gentle

If you send email to the instructor, please put "Stat 362" in the subject line.

Although the general schedule of the course will remain essentially as shown below, this web page will evolve as the semester progresses. In particular, links to solutions to assignments and quizzes will be posted at appropriate times (after the fact, of course!).

The general description of the course is available at www.science.gmu.edu/~jgentle/stat362/

• Week 1, Aug 28, 30
  Computer systems and organization; applications software.
  Data organization for statistical analysis.
  Introduction to the SAS software system (reference: The Little SAS Book , Chapter 1 and Section 8.3).
  The SAS DATA step and simple PROCs (PRINT, FREQ, CORR, and CHART, reference: The Little SAS Book , Sections 4.4, 4.11, and 7.4).
  Review of basic statistics: descriptive statistics and statistical inference.
  Assignment 1 (due following Tuesday ** will accept Thursday)
  Solution
  

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• Week 2, Sep 4, 6
  More on the DATA step; reading data from ASCII files.
  Basic univariate statistics.
  Review of basic statistics: estimation, hypothesis testing; etc.
  The SAS DATA step and more PROCs (reference: The Little SAS Book , Chapter 2 and Section 4.9).
  Conditional execution (reference: The Little SAS Book , Sections 3.4 and 3.5).
  DROP/KEEP
  Assignment 2 (due following Tuesday ** will accept Thursday)
  Solution
  

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• Week 3, Sep 11, 13
  More on the DATA step (reference: The Little SAS Book , Section 2.9).
  Saving and reusing SAS datasets.
  Additional statements in the SAS DATA step:
  Functions, OUTPUT/DELETE, DROP/KEEP, RENAME, LABEL
  Assignment 3 (due following Tuesday)
  Solution
  

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• Week 4, Sep 18, 20
  Combining and manipulating SAS datasets (reference: The Little SAS Book , Chapter 5).
  Sorting, concatenation, interleaving, merging, updating.
  Thursday, September 20, Quiz 1.
  Assignment 4 (due following Tuesday)
  Solution
  

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• Week 5, Sep 25, 27
  Review of Quiz 1
  Still more on the DATA step (reference: The Little SAS Book , Chapters 2, 3, and 4).
  Lagged variables; automatic variables; arrays; DO loops; and labels.
  More on the INPUT statement and controlling output.
  Character data; PUT and FILE statements;
  PROC FORMAT; custom formats; recoding.
  Assignment 5 (due following Tuesday)
  Solution
  

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• Week 6, Oct 2, 4
  Regression analysis; basic model fitting.
  Regression in SAS (reference: The Little SAS Book , Sections 7.5 and 7.6).
  PROC REG statement, MODEL statement, P option.
  Output, BY statement.
  PLOT statement, P. keyword, OVERLAY option.
  Assignment 6 (due following Thursday)
  Solution
  

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• Week 7, Oct 11 (no class Oct 9)
  More on regression analysis:
  Inspection of residuals -- patterns; polynomial regression;
  Confidence intervals; prediction intervals.
  Assignment 7 (due following Thursday)
  Solution
  

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• Week 8, Oct 16, 18
  Regression fitting; the AOV table associated with a regression analysis;
  More on regression model building (PostScript).
  Adequacy of fit: R-squared, adjusted R-squared
  Selection of variables in regression.
  Assignment 8 (due following Tuesday)
  Solution
  

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• Week 9, Oct 23, 25
  Review (combining datasets, regression, etc.).
  Thursday, October 25, Quiz 2.
  Assignment 9 (due following Tuesday)
  Solution
  

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• Week 10, Oct 30, Nov 1
  Review of Quiz 2
  More on SAS Datasets
  Informats/Formats
  Date data (reference: The Little SAS Book , Sections 3.7, 3.8).
  Subsetting SAS datasets
  Importing and exporting SAS datasets (reference: The Little SAS Book , Sections 2.6, 2.12, and 2.15--2.19).
  Assignment 10 (due following Tuesday)
  Solution
  

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• Week 11, Nov 6, 8
  Simple graphics in SAS
  Assignment 11 (due following Tuesday)
  Solution
  

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• Week 12, Nov 13, 15
  SAS macros (reference: The Little SAS Book , Chapter 6).
  Assignment 12 (due following Tuesday)
  Solution
  

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• Week 13, Nov 20
  Statistical graphics.
  SAS/GRAPH.
  Assignment 13 (due following Tuesday)
  Solution to Part II
  

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• Week 14, Nov 27, 29
  More on SAS/GRAPH.
  Thursday, November 29, Quiz 3.
  Assignment 14 (due following Tuesday)
  Solution
  
  

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• Week 15, Dec 4, 6
  SAS as a flexible programming language.
  PROC IML.
  More on SAS macros.
  Assignment 15 (not to turn in)
  Solution