Frequently Asked Questions

Most of the items in this section are software issues. If you have an experimental design question or need help to select the appropriate method to analyze your data, please read Design of Experiments and Data Analysis.

Questions

1. Documentation/Help learning SAS
2. Help learning SPSS
3. SAS, SPSS, Minitab availability
4. Reading a record in SAS whose length is >252
5. R Availability

Answers

1. Documentation/Help learning SAS
   If you are a beginning SAS user, the on-line tutorial is highly recommended. This consists of a series of short lessons. The tutorial is available on ITaP machines and through the software remote in the SAS Help menu under Getting started with SAS software. You may also access the free tutorial directly from the SAS website http://support.sas.com/edu/elearning.
   An Introductory SAS Course guide, written by consultants in the Statistical Consulting Service is available in the links on the left side of this page.
2. Help learning SPSS
   SPSS for Windows also has excellent on-line help. The sample data sets clearly illustrate each help topic. An SPSS Tutorial is available for beginning users. It consists of a series of short lessons that are explained and illustrated with a sample data set. The tutorial is available in the Help menu.
3. SAS, SPSS, Minitab availability
   SAS, SPSS and Minitab are available on campus ITaP computers. Under the Start Menu, go to All Programs, then go to the Standard Software folder, then the Statistical Packages folder. Those with a Purdue career account can also access these programs on a personal computer through ITaP's software remote. After logging in with your career account, go to the Standard Software folder, then the Statistical Packages folder. Link to ITaP's software remote.
4. Reading a record in SAS whose length is >252
   The default record length in SAS is 252. In the data step, use LRECL=n, where n is the length of the record to be read.
5. R Availability
   R is available as a free download from this website:
   
   (http://cran.r-project.org/)
   
   The following description of the program is taken from that website.
   
   R is `GNU S' - a freely available language and environment for statistical computing and graphics which provides a wide variety of statistical and graphical techniques: linear and nonlinear modelling, statistical tests, time series analysis, classification, clustering, etc. R help is available through an online manual http://cran.r-project.org/manuals.html.