SCS Short Courses, Spring 1995

Introduction to SAS for Windows
Introduction to SPSS for Windows
Lisp-Stat and Rcode for Interactive Data Analysis
Exploratory and Graphical Methods for Data Analysis

Introduction to SAS for Windows

Instructor:: Peggy Ng
Dates:: May 4, 11, 18, 25, June 8
Time:: Thursdays 10:00 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.
Location:: Room T107 Steacie Science Library
Enrolment Limit:: 30

The Statistical Analysis System (SAS) is a widely used general purpose data analysis program noted for its flexibility and its variety of statistical procedures. SAS runs on many computing platforms, from mainframes to personal computers. This course provides a basic introduction to SAS under the Windows environment.

The course consists of three parts, which may be taken individually or as a whole:

I Windows Pre-session: The pre-session is intended to make the SAS sessions accessible to those without previous experience with Windows on personal computers. Only the bare essentials of Windows will be covered; those familiar with Windows need not attend.

II Basic Introduction: Sessions One and Two provide an overview of SAS and its underlying logic; an explanation of the use of the Display Manager System to run a SAS job; an introduction to the SAS Data step for reading, transforming, and storing data; and a demonstration of how statistical analyses may be performed in SAS Proc (procedure) steps.

III Intermediate Topics: Sessions Three and Four will concentrate on SAS programming techniques to modify data and enhance SAS output. As well, more statistical procedures will be introduced.

Introduction to SPSS for Windows

Instructor:: Mirka Ondrack
Dates:: Fridays - May 5, 12, 19, 26, June 16
Time:: FRIDAYS, 10:00 a.m. - 1:30 p.m
Location:: Room T107 Steacie Science Library
Enrolment Limit:: 30

The Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) is a very popular data analysis system which has been in use since 1965. Release 4 of SPSS, the latest version of this program, is available at York on the CMS, MVS, and VAX (Orion) systems. Version 4 of SPSS for DOS-based microcomputers and version 6 of SPSS for Windows are also available.

This course consists of three parts, which may be taken individually or as a whole:

I Windows Pre-session: The pre-session is intended to make the SPSS sessions accessible to those without previous experience with Windows on personal computers. Only the bare essentials of Microsoft Windows will be covered.

II Basic Introduction: Session One is an elementary introduction to statistical computer programs, computing concepts, and the essentials of SPSS. At the end of the first session, participants should be able to run very simple programs, including some basic descriptive statistical procedures. Session Two will cover first-session topics in greater detail, concentrating on data definition facilities and various ways of formatting data.

III Intermediate Topics: Sessions Three and Four will introduce data modification, transformations, and functions. Session Five will cover the use of SPSS system files.

Lisp-Stat and R-code for Interactive Data Analysis

Instructor:: John Fox
Dates:: May 17, May 24
Time:: Wednesdays, 2:30pm - 4:30pm
Location:: tba
Enrolment Limit:: 30

Lisp-Stat is an object-oriented statistical computing environment based upon the Lisp programming language, and described in a book published by Luke Tierney in 1990. Lisp-Stat is especially well suited to developing graphical user interfaces for statistical software and to creating dynamic statistical graphs. Lisp-Stat is distributed free of charge by Tierney, and runs on Macs, on PCs under Windows, and on a variety of Unix workstations. R-code is an application written in Lisp-Stat and described in Cook and Weisberg's recent text, An Introduction to Regression Graphics. R-code implements a wide range of modern statistical graphics associated with regression analysis, and illustrates the power of Lisp-Stat for developing statistical software.

The goal of this short course is to demonstrate the use of R-code and to explain some of the basics of programming in Lisp-Stat.

Exploratory and Graphical Methods for Data Analysis

Instructor:: Michael Friendly
Dates:: May 31, June 7
Time:: Wednesdays, 1:30-4:30pm
Location:: Admin Studies, B037
Enrolment Limit:: 30

Exploratory Data Analysis (EDA) refers to a collection of techniques, often informal and graphical, for examining data closely. This short course will survey a number of the more useful techniques with an emphasis on -

Data displays which reveal aspects of data not easily captured in numerical summaries or tabular displays.
Diagnostic displays which help the viewer decide if assumptions of an analysis are met.

The following topics will be discussed:

Examining distributions-- stem & leaf plots, boxplots, probability plots, data transformations.
Examining relationships-- enhanced scatterplots, smoothing scatterplots.
Regression diagnostics-- residual plots, detecting influential observations, partial regression plots.
Multivariate data displays-- stars & profiles, biplots, detecting multivariate outliers

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