MR. WOOD HOME
JMU Economics
College of Business

Macro: 200
Course outline
Readings
Study Problems
Mankiw site
Grades

Micro: 201
Course outline
Readings
Study Problems
Mankiw site
Grades

Econometrics: 385
Sample files
Others' quizzes
SAS support

Ind Org: 345
Course outline
Readings
Assignments
Checklist
Grades

Online resources
Econ at JMU
Carrier Library
Statistical tables
Statistical Abstract
Data and links
Huge econ web index

About Mr. Wood
Vita
Written stuff
Econ Ed Center
How to get rich

Fairness in grading
Frequently asked
Should be asked
Just for fun
 

____________________
PUBLISHER:
William C. Wood
MSC 0204,
Harrisonburg, VA 22807
PHONE: (540) 568-3243

FOR INFORMATION CONTACT:
William C. Wood

Privacy Statement
Last Modified: 08/14/2008
____________________

Hit Counter

 

SAS support for Econ 385

SAS is a very powerful statistical package. Originally SAS stood for "Statistical Analysis System," but now SAS is a brand name on its own. (This is much like RCA, which was originally Radio Corporation of America but today is RCA Corp.)

If you're accustomed to a friendly personal computer interface, you will find SAS rather different. You'll find that SAS, even in its PC form, still reflects its mainframe heritage -- a time in which lines of code drove computers with great efficiency and accuracy, but did not present an easy interface.

The power and versatility of SAS are impressive, which is why it's in use all over the world for statistical analysis. This power comes at a cost: Your command scripts have to be flawless. Something as small as a missing semi-colon in a command script can keep your program from running at all, or mess up the results.

Count on spending some extra time on the SAS assignments, at least at first. And, take some comfort: In years gone by, all computer programs were this hard to use, or even harder!