STATISTICS 342/642: Introduction to Statistical Computing and
Exploratory Data Analysis - SAS
October 4, 2021
FINAL PROJECT
Due Dates: Dec 7. Submit your report in pdf to Crowdmark.
POLICY
1. This project is to be completed independently. You may use whatever class materials
you wish in completing this assignment. BUT DO NOT DISCUSS RESULTS
WITH ANYONE ELSE, WITHIN OR OUTSIDE OF THE CLASS. Failure
to follow this directive will result in a failing grade.
2. Late projects will be accepted at a penalty of 2 points/hour (it’s a 100 point project).
3. You are allowed to clarify the project requirements, but you are not advised to show
or discuss your answer with the TA and instructor and seek feedback from them.
4. The deadline for submission is Dec 7. Details of how to submit the answer will be
posted later.
ASSIGNMENT
One of the key skills of trasferable programming skills in SAS is to be able to dive deeply on
your own, read the help documents and online tutorials to learn about a new SAS procedure
on your own. You will be given a data set and will write a report of both analytical and
instructional nature. You will choose either of the two options below for self-studying and
learning to apply the SAS procedures.
1. PROC TABULATE + PROC SGPLOT
2. PROC GLM
These procedures are to be applied on a given dataset. You can choose from any or all of
the following three datasets from the UCI machine learning repositories as your example
dataset.
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1. Adult data (https://archive.ics.uci.edu/ml/datasets/adult)
2. Bank marketing data (https://archive.ics.uci.edu/ml/datasets/Bank+Marketing)
3. Student performance data (https://archive.ics.uci.edu/ml/datasets/Student+Performance
)
If you wish to use other dataset as your example, you are only allowed to use the one in the
UCI repositories and need to discuss with me and seek approval.
Your job is to write a tutorial article that shows how to use the SAS procedures above.
The tutorial report may consists of separate sections that teach different aspects/options
within a SAS procedure. You will write about:
1. Explanation in your own word of how a certain options works in the SAS procedure.
2. Example SAS code applied on the any of the three data set
3. Interpretation of the output from the example SAS code.
You should be able to explain these clearly in your report.
DELIVERABLES
You will prepare a pdf report consisting of two parts. The first part is the written report of
no more than 7 pages. The second part is an appendix that contains the table and figures
output from the SAS, indexed as Table 1, Table 2, Figure 1, Figure 2, etc, or anything else
you believe is important. The appendix could be of any length.
Pay attention to avoid plagiarism. Avoid direct copying of the relevant online
resources. Rephrase and reorganize what you have read in your own words.
Obvious failure to avoid plagiarism may result in a failing grade.
GRADES
Your grade will be assigned competitively based on the quality and coherence of your report.
My rubric includes marks for
• clarity of report,
• quality and thoroughness of the tutorial,
• the “degree of difficulty” associated with the example.
TIPS FOR HOW TO GET STARTED
There are plenty of material online for you to learn. For a beginner, I suggest first watching
a few youtube tutorials on these procedure. You will find there are plenty. Then, have
a read of the SAS help documents and mark out any SAS options you find worth further
exploration and write about. From there, you can start googling these options and read
more on it. There will be SAS code examples shown in these online youtube videos, and you
can adapt these code examples to apply on your example data set.
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TIPS WHEN YOU GET STUCK
I encourage you to choose to create tutorial reports on the more difficult aspects of the
three SAS procedures. When you get stuck and are unable to understand the relevant online
resources. Take a step back and try to find other resources on the very same problem that
are easier to understand. Gradually deepen your understanding and also give yourself a lot
of time. Allow yourself to come back and re-read certain pages that are hard to understand
in your first read. You may find it surprising that the previously hard material may suddenly
become easier to you if you give it some time to sink in.
FINAL COMMENTS
I hope this is a useful experience for you. I hope that many of you can learn from this journey
and prove to yourself that you are capable to handle challenges on your own. Remember,
in real life you will face a situation where your job requires you to acquire a technically
challenging skill on your own. This is practice...
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