Computer Labs

Each student will decide whether they will be using SAS or R. SAS is used in STAT 512, therefore, I strongly recommend that all students that are planing to take that class (statistics/actuarial science majors and statistics minors) choose SAS. In addition, SAS is the standard language used in actuarial science. R is a open source program and more general than SAS. R is often used in academia because it is open source. I recommend using RStudio which is what is used in the tutorials; however, you may also use R console.

Besides our normal office hours, there are additional office hours for help in the lab part of the course. On Wednesday nights from 6:30 pm - 8:30 pm (except during school holidays) there are two software help sessions. The first is to help anyone in the use of SAS and is in BRNG B286 (the basement of Beering). The second session is for STAT 350 students only in BRNG B282 (the basement of Beering). The TAs in the second help session will be available for questions in both SAS and R and any other questions that you may have in the course. During the day (except during breaks), there are software consultants in G-175 (information) that can answer software questions. They will be able to answer your programming questions in either SAS or R, but are not there to do the lab assignments for you.

To access the program from an ITAP computer, select All programs --> Standard Software --> Statistical Packages and select the appropriate software package.

To access the programs from a non-ITAP computer, use goremote. If you have never used goremote before, please follow the directions to download Citrix. Once Citrix is downloaded, log in using your career account and find the program by selecting Standard Software --> Statistical Packages.

Since R is a free software package, you may download the program directly to your own computer (see below for details). If you are interested, as long as you are a student at Purdue, you can get a copy of SAS from ITAP. Use the following link, http://www.itap.purdue.edu/shopping/software/product/sas.html for information on how to download SAS onto your home computer.

Additional Information for each package:

SAS: I have found the following two files to be useful in learning how to use this software package: a primer and some tips. However, they are out of date so some of the information might not be relevant. The online manual for SAS is at http://support.sas.com/documentation/index.html which is searchable or you can just google your question. One of the students in a previous course found a listing of SAS commands at www2.math.umd.edu/~slud/s430/Handouts/SAS_Functions.doc. This has a good listing of commands, however, it is for an outdated version of SAS (8.2; we are using 9.4) so there are newer commands that won't be listed.

R: Home page for R which has links for downloading the program, manuals and other important information. An introductory book, "Introductory Statistics with R", Peter Dalgaard, 2nd edition is available online from our library. In addition, you may google for "introduction R" and see what web sites are available. To watch the technology videos in StatsPortal: Resources --> student resources --> Video Technology Manuals --> Go, Select the software package that you want and play the Video that you are interested in.

Lab Syllabus Lab Syllabus

This schedule is tentative and subject to change.
All updates and changes will be in red.

Project

Lab Schedule