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Ten Great Reasons Why a Statistician Should Update to SAS® 9.2
Now that the full release of SAS 9.2 is available, many sites are making decisions about when to install this new release. Here are the top ten reasons why we think that statisticians should update to SAS 9.2 right away!
ODS Statistical Graphics
ODS Statistical Graphics changes everything about how you create statistical graphs in SAS software. Over 40 procedures in SAS/STAT® software take advantage of ODS graphics, producing appropriate graphs as part of the statistical output. You can make ad hoc changes with the ODS Graphics Editor, or you can permanently customize graphs by modifying the underlying graph templates. In addition, SAS/GRAPH® provides a number of new procedures designed specifically for data analysis.
Generalized linear mixed models
The GLIMMIX procedure fits statistical models to data with correlations or nonconstant variability and where the response is not necessarily normally distributed. If you downloaded PROC GLIMMIX for SAS 9.1.3, you'll be pleased with the enhancements for SAS 9.2: the COVTEST statement enables likelihood-based inference about covariance parameters, and estimation methods now include Laplace and adaptive quadrature estimation.
Bayesian analysis
The BAYES statement in the GENMOD, LIFEREG, and PHREG procedures specifies standard Bayesian analyses for many of the analyses offered by these procedures. The experimental MCMC procedure is a flexible simulation-based procedure that fits a wide range of Bayesian models. PROC MCMC will become production with the 9.2 maintenance release scheduled for early fall.
More model selection methods
The GLMSELECT procedure offers a variety of model selection methods, including LAR and LASSO, in the framework of general linear models. Selection can be from tens of thousands of effects.
Quantile regression
The QUANTREG procedure fits regression models to conditional quantiles of the response variable. It provides flexibility in modeling data with heterogeneous conditional distributions, which are often found in fields such as biomedicine and ecology.
Replication variance estimation methods in survey data analysis
The SURVEYFREQ, SURVEYMEANS, SURVEYLOGISTIC, and SURVEYREG procedures now provide variance estimation by balanced repeated replication (BRR) and jackknife methods, in addition to the Taylor series method.
SAS/IML® Studio
SAS Stat Studio (soon to be renamed SAS/IML Studio) provides a highly flexible programming environment in which you can run SAS/STAT or SAS/IML analyses and display the results with dynamically linked graphics and data tables. SAS/IML Studio is intended for data analysts who write SAS programs to solve statistical problems but need more versatility for model building and for implementing their own innovative methods. The name changes to SAS/IML Studio in July with an update that provides an interface to R.
Equivalance tests
The FREQ, TTEST, and POWER procedures now offer tests and power analysis for equivalence tests.
Group sequential analysis
The SEQDESIGN and SEQTEST procedures provide interim analysis of clinical trials. These procedures are experimental, and they will become production with the 9.2 maintenance release scheduled for early fall.
More than a hundred other new features
This release is stuffed with new statistical offerings, from high-performance-computing mixed models to ZIP models to group item analysis in structural equation modeling. For more information, see Getting Started with SAS/STAT 9.2 .
