SAS Statistical software now available for teaching at Western
Western Carolina University faculty and students
will have a powerful new tool at their disposal this fall
as Information Technology makes SAS (Statistical Analysis
Systems software) available to campus users for the first
time.
SAS is a program that allows organizations to pull together
vast amounts of diverse data and translate it into comprehensible
information, allowing for an improved decision-making process
once research has been accumulated.
"SAS is an entirely different breed of business-class
software," said Dr. Chris Snyder from Educational Technologies. "It
will provide new capabilities for several departments, going
far beyond previous systems like SPSS and MINITAB."
Unlike previous statistical software available on campus
that met most academic requirements, SAS is set to a professional
business standard of number crunching; this update should
lead to several significant advantages, according to Snyder.
The system is proving to offer some unexpected advancements
as well. In addition to uses in expected areas such as business,
sociology, education, and psychology, SAS will be implemented
in a mapping project by the Department of Geosciences and
Natural Resources Management this fall.
"SAS has been around since the 1970s, but it has undergone
a significant change in that time. Initially, it was known
exclusively as a programming language. By the 1990s, however,
it was translated into an infinitely more accessible point-and-click
program."
Snyder said he hopes researchers who might not have a background
in programming languages but who could benefit from the more
powerful system will be encouraged to seek training in SAS.
Educational Technologies will be offering workshops to train
faculty members in the use of SAS during the upcoming semester.
A schedule of dates can be found on the Information Technology
Web site at www.wcu.edu/etech/.
If unable to attend one of the workshops, faculty may schedule
an appointment at the Sandbox in Hunter Library.
The new version of SAS will soon be used at the Highlands
Biological Station in a project involving students from UNC
Chapel Hill as part of the Carolina Environmental Program.
Twelve students will stay at the station through the fall
2005 semester to gain hands-on experience with this technology.
Lisa Mazzarelli, associate director of Highlands Biological
Station, said that she was excited to use SAS in her upcoming
research. "It is certainly my statistical package of
choice," Mazzarelli said. "I learned to use it
in graduate school and I like how comprehensive and flexible
it can be."
Mazzarelli further stated that she was anxious to give the
improved 'point-and-click' version a try, to avoid her past
experience with SAS of typing long lines of code.
"It should be much easier to learn," she said.
SAS was developed locally in Cary, NC by a firm that routinely
works with the University of North Carolina system. It comes
to the university courtesy of a five-year grant that will
expire at the end of this school year.
For more information, call the IT Help desk at 227-7487
or e-mail itshelp@email.wcu.edu.
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