#SAS Rumor
21 messages in this thread
Don't get too excited! SAS on a PC isn't nearly as nifty as Systat on the
PC or MAC. The latter would truly be terrific. The former is just very
good!
Steve
I have used SAS once. I was using a IBM 3090. I hated it. I REALLY hated
it.
————————————————————TL———-
I used SAS once too(for about 30 min. :-), on an IBM 370. I could really
make some pretty pictures. (although I don't think the authors would
condone using SAS as a paint program 🙂
Greg
Trevor,
On the mainframe it's a horror!!! The PC version is a tad
friendlier, but not in the league of Systat w/StatGraph as far as user
friendly is concerned. Systat has been voted tops by most of the mags that
reviewed it along with most of the other stat packages for PCs and Macs. I
haven't yet used Systat, but from what I've seen it's pretty good. We have
StatView+SE for the Macs at our University and it's very easy to use, but
not as powerful as Systat. We have MacRats on order, but hasn't come in
yet, so I don't know how it compares.
We have used SAS on the mainframe as the major stat package that
the university supports, but it's hellashish to use, I agree. I once knew
how to use it, but have long since forgotten since I started using pc's.
Anything that requires learning JCL shouldn't be permitted to live!
Steve
In general, I have discovered that scientific packages are described as
"powerful" if they have nifty features. Nobody cares if they are impossible
to use. I watched an intelligent, experienced engineer with a docterate
berate ANSYS for a minor, but excruciatingly annoying, user interface error.
Then he said, "Well, I guess we're stuck with it." ARRRGH! The problem
would take less than a day of work to fix, and would still be compatible
with older versions. Why do users put up with crap? Why don't people demand
at least an _attempt_ at perfection? How can programmers STAND to see lousy
code go out the door?
.
Mind you, this same fellow let an M.E. student write a vital piece of
software for our lab that asked: "Metric or English units? (Type 1 for
Metric, 0 for English.)"
This using a microsoft 5.1 'C' compiler for the IBM clones! ARRRGH!
————————————————————TL———-
Well at least his student doesn't have much bias in his question. I would
have said "Type PI to 17 digits for English…anything else will be Metric"
<smmiiille>
Victor A. Wagner, Jr.
Vic:
I think all engineers for the last ten or fifteen years have been
taught Metric first, English second. I still prefer Fahrenheit for room
temperature (out of habit) but think in Celcius for calculation purposes.
We did an analysis on a 1963 Rover gas turbine for one of my senior labs.
All the data and specs were in English unit (ala 1963) so we converted the
few data in Metric to English and did everything that way. I had never
done fluids problems in English units before, and GADS! was it hell.
Conversion factors all over the place. I'm shocked anything ever got DONE
in english units, the equations get so messed up.
————————————————————TL———-
Want a "Powerful Scientific Package"?
Buy an HP 28s calculator. I'm serious. Makes most things look like toys in
comparison.
Ben
Amateur Radio Callsign is A A 7 A S
Ben
Ah, yes. But it can't do multivariate analysis! But I don't doubt
for a minute that those HP boys may soon come out with just such a doodad,
if they detect a market for it!
Steve
I dunno enuf about mv analysis to say… but it integrates and
differentiates, solves calculus directly, reduces/expands algebraic
equations, handles text strings, vectors& matrices, lists, real numbers,
binary values, proceedures, and a host of other things, stranger as the
list gets longer. :^)
It has a boffo set of stat fns, and the means to expand them as needed.
Oh, I forgot… it also handles complex #'s without batting an eye… handy
for us EE types. :^)))
Ben
Amateur Radio Callsign is A A 7 A S
Ben,
Yup! HP really knows how to make a hand held calculator that'll
blow your socks off. Never could understand why they have so much trouble
in the PC market. Maybe their New Wave will crack the market for them. I
have used their calculators since grad school in '72 with the HP-35. Then
when it was stolen I replaced it with the '55, and when it was stolen I
replaced it with the '37, which eventually died from a faulty switch
contact (those models were their big goof, IMHO). Now I have both the 12c
and 17b models. As you can see I'm a finance person.
Maybe I need to get that 28. If I can't use it, my daughter can!! It
slices, it dices, it grates, . . .!!
Steve
On the plus side for SAS. It is a big complex package. It is also
enormously powerful. One of my staff has just done a massive and very
sophisticated R&D job with it. It cut months of our development time (on
Sun-3s and Sun-4s). If you need something like SAS and its features it is
the best of the bunch on unix. BTW the dataset is now over 600MByte and
growing at 2-3MByte a day.
Forget the HP-28S. Buy the HP-48SX. Everything the 28 has, plus
expandability, 2-way IR link, an RS-232 port, and built-in Kermit.
Hard to forget – own it, and love it.
Ben
Amateur Radio Callsign is A A 7 A S
I agree, the 28S is great, and I had a great deal of fun with mine, but
I sold it last week so I could afford the 48SX. If you are a hard-core RPN
freak, you really should take a look at it. It corrects the only weakness
I could see in the 28, which was the inability to communicate. 32k of RAM,
and no way to back it up… YUCK! The 48SX allows me (or will, when I
finally get the cable I've ordered), to save my programs to my HD. It also
has this neat two-way IR link, which I'm sure all the college chemistry
profs are going to just love (don't pass a note during the final, just
squirt your cheat in IR 😉
Yes… things are getting really sophisticated. College countermeasures:
Saturate the room with the proper wavelength of modulated IR… <grin>
I was looking for the big one in Dayton, but I didn't see it. TOo bad.
Ben
Amateur Radio Callsign is A A 7 A S
Trevor,
Obviously you have also had the experience of using massive
software packages written, it seems, for the asm programmers who write the
O/S's for those damned mainframes! Our system programmers have provided
themselves with a nice frontend to make their work easier, but ask them to
do the same for end users and the can't waste their time. No wonder
research faculty have to spend more time learning how to make software work
than they spend doing research. And taxpayers wonder where the money in
education goes?
Steve
Hmm.. I would have had it say:
Type 1 for English, 2.54 for metric.
🙂
Larry (and Trevor),
Why does everyone try to make things complicated (Larry…I know
yours was a joke)?
Enter 'E' for English, 'M' for Metric
Don
Larry:
Perhaps 1 for Metric, .0254 for English. (International inch == .0254 m)
.
.
While we're on the subject, don't you all just HATE those computer ads that
exclaim, "Our system adds 2.5m RAM!" or "We ship a 14Msec drive standard!"
Gads! It's not like metric is at all complex compaired to the English system.
————————————————————TL———-
Powerful & Hard to use. Reminds me of WordPerfect. (MS-DOS version. I
have not seen Ami's.) Plenty O' Features somewhere in those '1', '2', '3',
'4', etc. menus at the bottom of the screen. F7 to exit.
— John