SAS version for Linux ?

Marc Schwartz marc_schwartz at comcast.net
Wed Feb 18 17:12:17 UTC 2009


Jay Mistry <jaylinux53 at gmail.com> writes:
>
> Thank you, all for your answers.
>
> I was looking for the Statistical Analysis Software (SAS) for Linux.
> Their website is difficult to navigate, especially for a newbie
> single-user, and I don't think it would be worth the while putting in
> a 'Call Request'  for my needs (single-PC, home user, student) ) - I
> dual-boot Win XP Prof with openSUSE 11.1 on my home PC; a few months
> ago it was only Win XP Prof. After installing Linux, I find I am using
> Linux much more than Windows, for a variety of reasons that can be
> found at most sites espousing GNU/Linux, and am keen to learn Linux
> and Programming Languages (later), (I have a medical background).
>
> SAS was the default software provided by the Dept/School IT Dept
> (volume-licensed to the School of Public Health) to Graduate students
> in the MPH (Master's in Public Health program...will not mention which
> School/Univ), where I was enrolled till a few months back- but had to
> withdraw mid-way due to health and domestic reasons. In the meantime
> (and even while in the MPH program), I was interested in appearing for
> the SAS/BASE Exam as a Professional Certification. Now, as I have some
> free time, I thought I might sit for the Exam and thought of
> installing SAS on oS 11.1 Linux; hence the question (also it would
> have *wowed* some of my Professors then, looking at the Platform -not
> being Windows XP, but on "Kernel Linux 2.6.27.7-9-pae" (I suppose that
> is what it would say in 'proc contents' - students needed to submit a
> copy of the SAS Program syntax with their Computer Homework). As such,
> quite a few MPH students found it difficult initially to install/
> configure SAS on even their _Windows_ PC's (laptops) - none had Linux
> and there was no Linux version of SAS 9.1.3 available at the Computer
> Labs, AFAIK.
>
> Well, I guess the bottom-line is that SAS can't (for all practical
> purposes for a home user like me, who can't shell out the $$$), be
> installed on Linux oS 11.1 at the moment. Besides, officially at
> least, oS 11.1 is not supported. So, if I need to practice for the
> SAS/ BASE Exam, it will have to be on Windows.
>
> Would like to explore the FOSS alternatives, particularly 'R' (though
> I think they R lacks the fancy add-ons such as ODS that SAS has; and
> has a steeper learning curve). As I recall there was a Course in
> Statistics where the Professor used 'R' entirely, instead of the
> default SAS.

Jay, R has Sweave, which IMHO, blows ODS out of the water. If you know
or are willing to learn LaTeX, you can combine R and LaTeX markup into a
single document, process it in R to generate the final TeX output and
the use latex/pdflatex to generate the final document, including
textual, tabular and graphic output. 

This approach is known as reproducible research and is my primary tool
for clinical trial reporting.

Frank Harrell has a page here:

  http://biostat.mc.vanderbilt.edu/twiki/bin/view/Main/StatReport

with some information and examples. The main Sweave page is here:

  http://www.statistik.lmu.de/~leisch/Sweave/

There is also a package called odfWeave, which enables Sweave style
functionality for OpenOffice documents in lieu of LaTeX. More
information here on CRAN:

  http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/odfWeave/index.html

HTH,

Marc




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