Student Papers A-Z

A
Session 1256-2017:
A Comparison of Machine Learning Methods and Logistic Analysis for the Prediction of Past-Due Amount
This poster shows how to predict a past-due amount using traditional and machine learning techniques: logistic analysis, k-nearest neighbors, and random forest. The data set that was analyzed is about real-world commerce. It contains 305 categories of financial information from more than 11,787,287 unique businesses, from 2006 to 2014. The big challenge is how to handle the big and noisy real-world data sets. The first step of any model-building exercise is to define the outcome. A common prediction method in the financial services industry is to use binary outcomes, such as Good and Bad. For our research problem, we reduced past-due amounts into two cases, Good and Bad. Next, we built a two-stage model using the logistic regression method; that is, the first stage predicts the likelihood of a Bad outcome, and the second predicts a past-due amount, given a Bad outcome. Logistic analysis as a traditional statistical technique is commonly used for prediction and classification in the financial services industry. However, for analyzing big, noisy, or complex data sets, machine learning techniques are typically preferred to detect hard-to-discern patterns. To compare with both techniques, we use predictive accuracy, ROC index, sensitivity, and specificity as criteria.
Jie Hao, Kennesaw State University
Peter Eberhardt, Fernwood Consulting Group Inc.
Session SAS0245-2017:
Accessing DBMS with the GROOVY Procedure and a JDBC Connection
SAS/ACCESS® software grants access to data in third-party database management systems (DBMS), but how do you access data in DBMS not supported by SAS/ACCESS products? The introduction of the GROOVY procedure in SAS® 9.3 lets you retrieve this formerly inaccessible data through a JDBC connection. Groovy is an object-oriented, dynamic programming language executed on the Java Virtual Machine (JVM). Using Microsoft Azure HDInsight as an example, this paper demonstrates how to access and read data into a SAS data set using PROC GROOVY and a JDBC connection.
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Lilyanne Zhang, SAS
Session 1161-2017:
An Analysis of the Repetitiveness of Lyrics in Predicting a Song's Popularity
To determine whether there is a correlation between the repetitiveness of a song s lyrics and its popularity, the top 10 songs from the Billboard Hot 100 songs chart from 2006 to 2015 were collected. Song lyrics were assessed to determine the count of the top 10 words used. Word counts were used to predict the number of weeks the song was on the chart. The prediction model was analyzed to determine the quality of the model and whether word count was a significant predictor of a song s popularity. To investigate whether song lyrics are becoming more simplistic over time, several tests were performed to see whether the average word count has been changing over the years. All analysis was completed in SAS® using various procedures.
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Drew Doyle, University of Central Florida
Session 1477-2017:
Analyzing Residuals in a PROC SURVEYLOGISTIC Model
Data from an extensive survey conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) is used for predicting qualified secondary school teachers across public schools in the U.S. The sample data includes socioeconomic data at the county level, which is used as a predictor for hiring a qualified teacher. The resultant model is used to score other regions and is presented on a heat map of the U.S. The survey family of procedures that SAS® offers, such as PROC SURVEYFREQ and PROC SURVEYLOGISTIC, are used in the analyses since the data involves replicate weights. In looking at residuals from a logistic regression, since all the outcomes (observed values) are either 0 or 1, the residuals do not necessarily follow the normal distribution that is so often assumed in residual analysis. Furthermore, in dealing with survey data, the weights of the observations must be accounted for, as these affect the variance of the observations. To adjust for this, rather than looking at the difference in the observed and predicted values, the difference between the expected and actual counts is calculated by using the weights on each observation, and the predicted probability from the logistic model for the observation. Three types of residuals are analyzed: Pearson, Deviance, and Studentized residuals. The purpose is to identify which type of residuals best satisfy the assumption of normality when investigating residuals from a logistic regression.
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Bogdan Gadidov, Kennesaw State University
Session SAS0282-2017:
Applying Text Analytics and Machine Learning to Assess Consumer Financial Complaints
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) collects tens of thousands of complaints against companies each year, many of which result in the companies in question taking action, including making payouts to the individuals who filed the complaints. Given the volume of the complaints, how can an overseeing organization quantitatively assess the data for various trends, including the areas of greatest concern for consumers? In this presentation, we propose a repeatable model of text analytics techniques to the publicly available CFPB data. Specifically, we use SAS® Contextual Analysis to explore sentiment, and machine learning techniques to model the natural language available in each free-form complaint against a disposition code for the complaint, primarily focusing on whether a company paid out money. This process generates a taxonomy in an automated manner. We also explore methods to structure and visualize the results, showcasing how areas of concern are made available to analysts using SAS® Visual Analytics and SAS® Visual Statistics. Finally, we discuss the applications of this methodology for overseeing government agencies and financial institutions alike.
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Tom Sabo, SAS
Session 0968-2017:
Association between Sunlight and Specific-Cause Mortality
Research frequently shows that exposure to sunlight contributes to non-melanoma skin cancer. But, it also shows that sunlight might protect you against multiple sclerosis and breast, ovarian, prostate, and colon cancer. In my study, I explored whether mortality from skin cancer, myocardial infarction, atrial fibrillation, and stroke is associated with exposure to sunlight. I used SAS® 9.4 and RStudio to conduct the entire study. I collected mortality data including cause of death in Los Angeles from 2000 to 2003. In addition, I collected sunlight data for Los Angeles for the same period. There are three types of sunlight in my data global sunlight, diffuse sunlight, and direct sunlight. Data was collected at three different times morning, middle of day, and afternoon. I used two models the Poisson time series regression model and a logistic regression model to investigate the association. I considered a one-year and two-year lag of sunlight association with the types of diseases. I adjusted for age, sex, race, education, temperature, and day of week. Results show that stroke is statistically and significantly associated with a one-year lag of sunlight (p<0.001). Previous epidemiological studies have found that sunlight exposure can ameliorate osteoporosis in stroke patients, and my study provides the protective effects of sunlight on stroke patients.
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Wei Xiong, University of Southern California
B
Session 0175-2017:
Best-Practice Programming Techniques Using SAS® Software
It's essential that SAS® users enhance their skills to implement best-practice programming techniques when using Base SAS® software. This presentation illustrates core concepts with examples to ensure that code is readable, clearly written, understandable, structured, portable, and maintainable. Attendees learn how to apply good programming techniques including implementing naming conventions for data sets, variables, programs, and libraries; code appearance and structure using modular design, logic scenarios, controlled loops, subroutines and embedded control flow; code compatibility and portability across applications and operating platforms; developing readable code and program documentation; applying statements, options, and definitions to achieve the greatest advantage in the program environment; and implementing program generality into code to enable its continued operation with little or no modifications.
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Kirk Paul Lafler, Software Intelligence Corporation
D
Session SAS0118-2017:
DATA Step in SAS® Viya™: Essential New Features
The DATA step is the familiar and powerful data processing language in SAS® and now SAS Viya . The DATA step's simple syntax provides row-at-a-time operations to edit, restructure, and combine data. New to the DATA step in SAS Viya are a varying-size character data type and parallel execution. Varying-size character data enables intuitive string operations that go beyond the 32KB limit of current DATA step operations. Parallel execution speeds the processing of big data by starting the DATA step on multiple machines and dividing data processing among threads on these machines. To avoid multi-threaded programming errors, the run-time environment for the DATA step is presented along with potential programming pitfalls. Come see how the DATA step in SAS Viya makes your data processing simpler and faster.
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Jason Secosky, SAS
Session SAS0315-2017:
Decorative Infographics Using SAS®
The SAS® 9.4 SGPLOT procedure is a great tool for creating all types of graphs, from business graphs to complex clinical graphs. The goal for such graphs is to convey the data in a simple and direct manner with minimal distractions. But often, you need to grab the attention of a reader in the midst of a sea of data and graphs. For such cases, you need a visual that can stand out above the rest of the noise. Such visuals insert a decorative flavor into the graph to attract the eye of the reader and to encourage them to spend more time studying the visual. This presentation discusses how you can create such attention-grabbing visuals using the SGPLOT procedure.
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Sanjay Matange, SAS
Session 0957-2017:
Does Factor Indeterminacy Matter in Multidimensional Item Response Theory?
This paper illustrates proper applications of multidimensional item response theory (MIRT), which is available in SAS® PROC IRT. MIRT combines item response theory (IRT) modeling and factor analysis when the instrument carries two or more latent traits. Although it might seem convenient to accomplish two tasks simultaneously by using one procedure, users should be cautious of misinterpretations. This illustration uses the 2012 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) data set collected by Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Because there are two known sub-domains in the PISA test (reading and math), PROC IRT was programmed to adopt a two-factor solution. In additional, the loading plot, dual plot, item difficulty/discrimination plot, and test information function plot in JMP® were used to examine the psychometric properties of the PISA test. When reading and math items were analyzed in SAS MIRT, seven to 10 latent factors are suggested. At first glance, these results are puzzling because ideally all items should be loaded into two factors. However, when the psychometric attributes yielded from a two-parameter IRT analysis are examined, it is evident that both the reading and math test items are well written. It is concluded that even if factor indeterminacy is present, it is advisable to evaluate its psychometric soundness based on IRT because content validity can supersede construct validity.
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Chong Ho Yu, Azusa Pacific University
E
Session SAS0374-2017:
Estimating Causal Effects from Observational Data with the CAUSALTRT Procedure
Randomized control trials have long been considered the gold standard for establishing causal treatment effects. Can causal effects be reasonably estimated from observational data too? In observational studies, you observe treatment T and outcome Y without controlling confounding variables that might explain the observed associations between T and Y. Estimating the causal effect of treatment T therefore requires adjustments that remove the effects of the confounding variables. The new CAUSALTRT (causal-treat) procedure in SAS/STAT® 14.2 enables you to estimate the causal effect of a treatment decision by modeling either the treatment assignment T or the outcome Y, or both. Specifically, modeling the treatment leads to the inverse probability weighting methods, and modeling the outcome leads to the regression methods. Combined modeling of the treatment and outcome leads to doubly robust methods that can provide unbiased estimates for the treatment effect even if one of the models is misspecified. This paper reviews the statistical methods that are implemented in the CAUSALTRT procedure and includes examples of how you can use this procedure to estimate causal effects from observational data. This paper also illustrates some other important features of the CAUSALTRT procedure, including bootstrap resampling, covariate balance diagnostics, and statistical graphics.
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Michael Lamm, SAS
Yiu-Fai Yung, SAS
F
Session 0202-2017:
Fitting a Flexible Model for Longitudinal Count Data Using the NLMIXED Procedure
Longitudinal count data arise when a subject's outcomes are measured repeatedly over time. Repeated measures count data have an inherent within subject correlation that is commonly modeled with random effects in the standard Poisson regression. A Poisson regression model with random effects is easily fit in SAS® using existing options in the NLMIXED procedure. This model allows for overdispersion via the nature of the repeated measures; however, departures from equidispersion can also exist due to the underlying count process mechanism. We present an extension of the cross-sectional COM-Poisson (CMP) regression model established by Sellers and Shmueli (2010) (a generalized regression model for count data in light of inherent data dispersion) to incorporate random effects for analysis of longitudinal count data. We detail how to fit the CMP longitudinal model via a user-defined log-likelihood function in PROC NLMIXED. We demonstrate the model flexibility of the CMP longitudinal model via simulated and real data examples.
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Darcy Morris, U.S. Census Bureau
G
Session 0187-2017:
Guidelines for Protecting Your Computer, Network, and Data from Malware Threats
Because many SAS® users either work for or own companies that house big data, the threat that malicious software poses becomes even more extreme. Malicious software, often abbreviated as malware, includes many different classifications, ways of infection, and methods of attack. This E-Poster highlights the types of malware, detection strategies, and removal methods. It provides guidelines to secure essential assets and prevent future malware breaches.
Read the paper (PDF) | View the e-poster or slides (PDF)
Ryan Lafler
H
Session 0340-2017:
How to Use SAS® to Filter Stock for Trade
Investors usually trade stocks or exchange-traded funds (ETFs) based on a methodology, such as a theory, a model, or a specific chart pattern. There are more than 10,000 securities listed on the US stock market. Picking the right one based on a methodology from so many candidates is usually a big challenge. This paper presents the methodology based on the CANSLIM1 theorem and momentum trading (MT) theorem. We often hear of the cup and handle shape (C&H), double bottoms and multiple bottoms (MB), support and resistance lines (SRL), market direction (MD), fundamental analyses (FA), and technical analyses (TA). Those are all covered in CANSLIM theorem. MT is a trading theorem based on stock moving direction or momentum. Both theorems are easy to learn but difficult to apply without an appropriate tool. The brokers' application system usually cannot provide such filtering due to its complexity. For example, for C&H, where is the handle located? For the MB, where is the last bottom you should trade at? Now, the challenging task can be fulfilled through SAS®. This paper presents the methods on how to apply the logic and graphically present them though SAS. All SAS users, especially those who work directly on capital market business, can benefit from reading this document to achieve their investment goals. Much of the programming logic can also be adopted in SAS finance packages for clients.
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Brian Shen, Merlin Clinical Service LLC
K
Session 1002-2017:
Know Thyself: Diabetes Trend Analysis
Throughout history, the phrase know thyself has been the aspiration of many. The trend of wearable technologies has certainly provided the opportunity to collect personal data. These technologies enable individuals to know thyself on a more sophisticated level. Specifically, wearable technologies that can track a patient's medical profile in a web-based environment, such as continuous blood glucose monitors, are saving lives. The main goal for diabetics is to replicate the functions of the pancreas in a manner that allows them to live a normal, functioning lifestyle. Many diabetics have access to a visual analytics website to track their blood glucose readings. However, they often are unreadable and overloaded with information. Analyzing these readings from the glucose monitor and insulin pump with SAS®, diabetics can parse their own information into more simplified and readable graphs. This presentation demonstrates the ease in creating these visualizations. Not only is this beneficial for diabetics, but also for the doctors that prescribe the necessary basal and bolus levels of insulin for a patient s insulin pump.
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Taylor Larkin, The University of Alabama
Denise McManus, The University of Alabama
M
Session 1231-2017:
Modeling Machiavelianism: Predicting Scores with Fewer Factors
Prince Niccolo Machiavelli said things on the order of, The promise given was a necessity of the past: the word broken is a necessity of the present. His utilitarian philosophy can be summed up by the phrase, The ends justify the means. As a personality trait, Machiavelianism is characterized by the drive to pursue one's own goals at the cost of others. In 1970, Richard Christie and Florence L. Geis created the MACH-IV test to assign a MACH score to an individual, using 20 Likert-scaled questions. The purpose of this study was to build a regression model that can be used to predict the MACH score of an individual using fewer factors. Such a model could be useful in screening processes where personality is considered, such as in job screening, offender profiling, or online dating. The research was conducted on a data set from an online personality test similar to the MACH-IV test. It was hypothesized that a statistically significant model exists that can predict an average MACH score for individuals with similar factors. This hypothesis was accepted.
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Patrick Schambach, Kennesaw State University
N
Session SAS0127-2017:
New for SAS® 9.4: Including Text and Graphics in Your Microsoft Excel Workbooks, Part 2
A new ODS destination for creating Microsoft Excel workbooks is available starting in the third maintenance release for SAS® 9.4. This destination creates native Microsoft Excel XLSX files, supports graphic images, and offers other advantages over the older ExcelXP tagset. In this presentation, you learn step-by-step techniques for quickly and easily creating attractive multi-sheet Excel workbooks that contain your SAS® output. The techniques can be used regardless of the platform on which SAS software is installed. You can even use them on a mainframe! Creating and delivering your workbooks on demand and in real time using SAS server technology is discussed. Using earlier versions of SAS to create multi-sheet workbooks is also discussed. Although the title is similar to previous presentations by this author, this presentation contains new and revised material not previously presented.
Read the paper (PDF) | Download the data file (ZIP)
Vince DelGobbo, SAS
Q
Session 0173-2017:
Quick Results with SAS® Enterprise Guide®
SAS® Enterprise Guide® empowers organizations, programmers, business analysts, statisticians, and end users with all the capabilities that SAS has to offer. This hands-on workshop presents the SAS Enterprise Guide graphical user interface (GUI). It covers access to multi-platform enterprise data sources, various data manipulation techniques that do not require you to learn complex coding constructs, built-in wizards for performing reporting and analytical tasks, the delivery of data and results to a variety of mediums and outlets, and support for data management and documentation requirements. Attendees learn how to use the graphical user interface to access SAS® data sets and tab-delimited and Microsoft Excel input files; to subset and summarize data; to join (or merge) two tables together; to flexibly export results to HTML, PDF, and Excel; and to visually manage projects using flow diagrams.
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Kirk Paul Lafler, Software Intelligence Corporation
Ryan Lafler
Session 0998-2017:
Quick Results with SAS® University Edition
The announcement of SAS Institute's free SAS® University Edition is an exciting development for SAS users and learners around the world! The software bundle includes Base SAS®, SAS/STAT® software, SAS/IML® software, SAS® Studio (user interface), and SAS/ACCESS® for Windows, with all the popular features found in the licensed SAS versions. This is an incredible opportunity for users, statisticians, data analysts, scientists, programmers, students, and academics everywhere to use (and learn) for career opportunities and advancement. Capabilities include data manipulation, data management, comprehensive programming language, powerful analytics, high-quality graphics, world-renowned statistical analysis capabilities, and many other exciting features. This paper illustrates a variety of powerful features found in the SAS University Edition. Attendees will be shown a number of tips and techniques on how to use the SAS® Studio user interface, and they will see demonstrations of powerful data management and programming features found in this exciting software bundle.
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Ryan Lafler
R
Session 0188-2017:
Removing Duplicates Using SAS®
We live in a world of data; small data, big data, and data in every conceivable size between small and big. In today's world, data finds its way into our lives wherever we are. We talk about data, create data, read data, transmit data, receive data, and save data constantly during any given hour in a day, and we still want and need more. So, we collect even more data at work, in meetings, at home, on our smartphones, in emails, in voice messages, sifting through financial reports, analyzing profits and losses, watching streaming videos, playing computer games, comparing sports teams and favorite players, and countless other ways. Data is growing and being collected at such astounding rates, all in the hope of being able to better understand the world around us. As SAS® professionals, the world of data offers many new and exciting opportunities, but it also presents a frightening realization that data sources might very well contain a host of integrity issues that need to be resolved first. This presentation describes the available methods to remove duplicate observations (or rows) from data sets (or tables) based on the row's values and keys using SAS.
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Kirk Paul Lafler, Software Intelligence Corporation
S
Session 0924-2017:
Survival Analysis of Lung Cancer Patients Using PROC PHREG and PROC LIFETEST
Survival analysis differs from other types of statistical analysis, including graphical summaries and regression modeling procedures, because data is almost always censored. The purpose of this project is to apply survival analysis techniques in SAS® to practical survival data, aiming to understand the effects of gender and age on lung cancer patient survival at different cancer sites. Results show that both gender and age are significant variables in predicting lung cancer patient survival using the Cox proportional hazards model. Females have better survival than males when other variables in the model are fixed (p-value 0.0254). Moreover, the hazard of patients who are over 65 is 1.385 times that of patients who are under 65 (p-value 0.0145).
View the e-poster or slides (PDF)
Yan Wang, Kennesaw State University
T
Session 0274-2017:
Text Generation Data Sets (Text GDS)
SAS offers generation data set structure as part of the language feature that many users are familiar with. They use it in their organizations and manage it using keywords such as GENMAX and GENNUM. While SAS operates in a mainframe environment, users also have the ability to tap into the GDG (generation data group) feature available on z/OS, OS/390, OS/370, IBM 3070, or IBM 3090 machines. With cost-saving initiatives across businesses and due to some scaling factors, many organizations are in the process of migrating to mid-tier platforms to cheaper operating platforms such as UNIX and AIX. Because Linux is open source and is a cheaper alternative, several organizations have opted for the UNIX distribution of SAS that can work in UNIX and AIX environments. While this might be a viable alternative, there are certain nuances that the migration effort brings to the technical conversion teams. On UNIX, the concept of GDGs does not exist. While SAS offers generation data sets, they are good only for SAS data sets. If the business organization needs to house and operate with a GDG-like structure for text data sets, there isn't one available. While my organization had a similar initiative to migrate programs used to run the subprime mortgage analytic, incentive, and regulatory reporting, we identified the paucity of literature and research on this topic. Hence, I ended up developing the utility that addresses this need. This is a simple macro that helps us closely simulate a GDG/GDS.
Read the paper (PDF) | View the e-poster or slides (PDF)
Dr. Kannan Deivasigamani, HSBC
Session 1322-2017:
The Orange Lifestyle
As a freshman at a large university, life can be fun as well as stressful. The choices a freshman makes while in college might impact his or her overall health. In order to examine the overall health and different behaviors of students at Oklahoma State University, a survey was conducted among the freshmen students. The survey focused on capturing the psychological, environmental, diet, exercise, and alcohol and drug use among students. A total of 795 out of 1,036 freshman students completed the survey, which included around 270 questions that covered the range of issues mentioned above. An exploratory factor analysis identified 26 factors. For example, two factors that relate to the behavior of students under stress are eating and relaxing. Further understanding the variables that contribute to alcohol and drug use might help the university in planning appropriate interventions and preventions. Factor analysis with Cronbach's alpha provided insight into a more defined set of variables to help address these types of issues. We used SAS® to do factor analysis as well as to create different clusters of students with unique characteristics and profiled these clusters
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Mohit Singhi, Oklahoma State University
Session SAS0289-2017:
The Well-Equipped Student: Using SAS® University Edition and E-Learning to Gain SAS® Skills
SAS® programming skills are much in-demand, and numerous free tools are available for students who want to develop those skills. This paper introduces students to SAS® Studio and the Jupyter Notebook interface within SAS® University Edition. To make this introduction more tangible, the paper uses a large data set of baseball statistics as an example. In particular, statistical analysis using SAS® Studio examines the relationship between salary and performance for major leaguers. From importing text files to creating basic statistics to doing a more advanced analysis, this paper shows multiple ways to carry out tasks so that you can choose whichever method works best for you. Additional statistics that use t tests and linear regression are simple with SAS University Edition. For completeness, the paper shows the same code that is used in SAS Studio examples in the context of Jupyter Notebook in SAS University Edition. The paper also provides additional information about SAS e-learning and SAS Certification to show students how to be fully equipped in order to apply themselves to analytics and data exploration.
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Randy Mullis, SAS
Allison Mahaffey, SAS
Session 1270-2017:
Time Series Analysis and Forecasting in SAS® University Edition
Time series analysis and forecasting have always been popular as businesses realize the power and impact they can have. Getting students to learn effective and correct ways to build their models is key to having successful analyses as more graduates move into the business world. Using SAS® University Edition is a great way for students to learn analysis, and this talk focuses on the time series tasks. A brief introduction to time series is provided, as well as other important topics that are key to building strong models.
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Chris Battiston
Session 1160-2017:
To Hydrate or Chlorinate: A Regression Analysis of the Levels of Chlorine in the Public Water Supply
Public water supplies contain disease-causing microorganisms in the water or distribution ducts. To kill off these pathogens, a disinfectant, such as chlorine, is added to the water. Chlorine is the most widely used disinfectant in all US water treatment facilities. Chlorine is known to be one of the most powerful disinfectants to restrict harmful pathogens from reaching the consumer. In the interest of obtaining a better understanding of what variables affect the levels of chlorine in the water, this presentation analyzed a particular set of water samples randomly collected from locations in Orange County, Florida. Thirty water samples were collected and their chlorine level, temperature, and pH were recorded. A linear regression analysis was performed on the data collected with several qualitative and quantitative variables. Water storage time, temperature, time of day, location, pH, and dissolved oxygen level were the independent variables collected from each water sample. All data collected was analyzed using various SAS® procedures. Partial residual plots were used to determine possible relationships between the chlorine level and the independent variables. A stepwise selection was used to eliminate possible insignificant predictors. From there, several possible models for the data were selected. F-tests were conducted to determine which of the models appeared to be the most useful.
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Drew Doyle, University of Central Florida
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