Prev: Error Message when trying to open SAS
Next: Aggragate loss distribution
From: Mary on 9 Jul 2008 16:45
Still, Excel is a powerful tool for "making things pretty", such as its =
conditional formatting capabilities. I do agree that things need to be =
reproducible; if one does things in Excel, one needs to learn Visual =
Basic and save code as modules. =20

-Mary
----- Original Message -----=20
From: Mikko J Virtanen=20
To: SAS-L(a)LISTSERV.UGA.EDU=20
Sent: Wednesday, July 09, 2008 3:03 PM
Subject: Re: Is R overtaking SAS at universities and colleges?


Angel <norcalangel(a)gmail.com> writes:
> I tend to restructure/rearrange/organize only the output i
> want to display in SAS and then ODS it and put the finishing touches
> on it personally using Excel.

You should definitely try to outlearn using Excel for "puttin the
finishing touches on it personally". After you graduate, you'll end up
in sutuations, where you need the finishing touches but do not have to
do them personally. Only way to avoid this is to learn to do them with
ODS. You could equally learn to do them with Sweave or something else,
as long as you think of the process in terms of BI. This will make you
more productive, and as an important side effect, it will make your
research reproducible.

Where I work, we consider "knowing Excel" a big minus for a
(bio)statistician. Knowing ODS is a huge plus even when the project
does not use SAS.

MJ;

--
.signature necesse est
From: Mary on 9 Jul 2008 18:27
Maybe I'll take that statement back; I just discovered tagsets, just out of
the frustration of Proc Export dropping my formats on my variables I decided
to try it this afternoon, and was impressed!

Here's an example:

ods tagsets.excelxp file='C:\Work_Activities\crosstabs_results_new.xls'
style=statistical
options(sheet_name='agelt65_16vs3_nonsmoking');
run;
proc print noobs data=results;
run;
ods tagsets.excelxp close;
run;

I've also found a link explaining them at:

http://support.sas.com/rnd/base/ods/odsmarkup/excelxp_demo.html

-Mary

----- Original Message -----
From: Mary
To: Mikko J Virtanen ; SAS-L(a)LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Sent: Wednesday, July 09, 2008 3:45 PM
Subject: Re: Re: Is R overtaking SAS at universities and colleges?


Still, Excel is a powerful tool for "making things pretty", such as its
conditional formatting capabilities. I do agree that things need to be
reproducible; if one does things in Excel, one needs to learn Visual Basic
and save code as modules.

-Mary
----- Original Message -----
From: Mikko J Virtanen
To: SAS-L(a)LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Sent: Wednesday, July 09, 2008 3:03 PM
Subject: Re: Is R overtaking SAS at universities and colleges?


Angel <norcalangel(a)gmail.com> writes:
> I tend to restructure/rearrange/organize only the output i
> want to display in SAS and then ODS it and put the finishing touches
> on it personally using Excel.

You should definitely try to outlearn using Excel for "puttin the
finishing touches on it personally". After you graduate, you'll end up
in sutuations, where you need the finishing touches but do not have to
do them personally. Only way to avoid this is to learn to do them with
ODS. You could equally learn to do them with Sweave or something else,
as long as you think of the process in terms of BI. This will make you
more productive, and as an important side effect, it will make your
research reproducible.

Where I work, we consider "knowing Excel" a big minus for a
(bio)statistician. Knowing ODS is a huge plus even when the project
does not use SAS.

MJ;

--
..signature necesse est
From: Mikko J Virtanen on 10 Jul 2008 03:51
mlhoward(a)avalon.net (Mary) writes:
> Maybe I'll take that statement back; I just discovered tagsets, just out of
> the frustration of Proc Export dropping my formats on my variables I decided
> to try it this afternoon, and was impressed!

This indeed is very useful.

> Still, Excel is a powerful tool for "making things pretty", such as its
> conditional formatting capabilities. I do agree that things need to be
> reproducible; if one does things in Excel, one needs to learn Visual Basic
> and save code as modules.

My original point, if there ever was one, was that one should *learn*
to do everything via code. Editing by hand is sometimes OK, but as
soon as you need to repeat stuff or when you need to create
publication quality reports in a hurry, it will fail.

Doing with SAS is better than doing with VBA, as despite the pressure
from R and the like, SAS will probably exist much longer than
VBA. I've used SAS code older than Excel, rather recently. Written
originally on a platform that no longer exists. I revitalised an epi
project for 20yrs additional follow-up. No doubt it will be revitaised
again in 20yrs.

> -Mary

MJ;

--
..signature necesse est
First  |  Prev  | 
Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Prev: Error Message when trying to open SAS
Next: Aggragate loss distribution