Preface

The 1960s were a great decade to be a student. Optimism was in the air, Dylan was declaring that the times were changing, and most students were enjoying the chances to experiment with alternative lifestyles from those of their parents. Most—but not all!—students of statistics were burdened with hours of tedious arithmetic with mechanical calculators, which was needed to get results from the application of one or another statistical technique applied to some particular data set; this absorbed so much of their time that many of them (us) could only be envious observers of the good times going on around them. No wonder that statisticians were often considered rather grumpy and introverted by their colleagues!

In the intervening five decades or so, everything has changed. All of the arithmetic required by a statistical analysis is undertaken with the aid of a computer and a statistical package. This means that there is more energy and more time available to be spent on the interpretation of results and reaching a conclusion about what story the data has to tell. A result of this change is that statisticians have become far happier with their lot, and having one as a friend is no longer something to keep under wraps. The authors of this book now have lots of friends.

Statistics is ubiquitous in all fields of study from archaeology to zoology and from art to zero tolerance. The vast majority of undergraduate and postgraduate students will at some time be faced with undertaking a statistical procedure on their own after perhaps having taken an introductory statistics course. In this book, we demonstrate how to use SAS University Edition to apply a variety of statistical methodology from the simple to the not-so-simple to a range of data sets. The statistical techniques used are only briefly introduced and for details of relevant formulae etc., readers are mainly referred to another text on introductory statistics.

Our main aim here is to show how to apply the appropriate statistical method for answering a particular question about a data set using SAS University Edition and in the correct interpretation of the numerical results obtained. The menu driven interface, SAS Studio, is used for all analyses, and no programming knowledge is assumed or needed.

Exercises are included at the end of most chapters; attempting these exercises will solidify what has been learnt in a chapter. All the data sets are available for downloading from the book’s companion Web site at http://support.sas.com/everitt and http://support.sas.com/der.

Geoff Der, Glasgow
Brian Everitt, Dulwich
2015