Inefficiency of SAS Programming

for an " inefficient " language , it sure has dominated the predictive
analytics world for 3 plus decades.
I referred once to intellectual jealousy between newton and liebnitz.

i am going ahead and creating the R package called "Anne".

It basically is meant only for SAS users who want to learn R ,
without upsetting the schedule of the corporate users.

Simply put , it is a wrapper on SAS language using the function command...ie
procunivariate function in "Anne" package would call the summary function
and so on...

Regards,

Ajay

www.decisionstats.com

On Tue, Mar 3, 2009 at 9:20 AM, Greg Snow <Greg.Snow at imail.org> wrote:

This does not really address my point.  Yes, if the few nerds who want to
do funny stuff are the ones making the purchase, then there is a good chance
(but still not guaranteed) that they will get IML, but do all companies that
buy SAS actually think about that, or do they just see the extra price (no
matter how low), or not even think to look at that piece because the person
making the purchase does not really the funny things you can do with it.

If you want your SAS code to be able to be run by anyone with SAS, you
cannot assume that they have IML.  If you want your R code to be run by
anyone, you cannot make your code dependent on packages/tools that are not
available for all platforms.

--
Gregory (Greg) L. Snow Ph.D.
Statistical Data Center
Intermountain Healthcare
greg.snow at imail.org
801.408.8111

-----Original Message-----
From: Gerard M. Keogh [mailto:GMKeogh at justice.ie]
Sent: Monday, March 02, 2009 3:22 AM
To: Greg Snow
Cc: Frank E Harrell Jr; R list; r-help-bounces at r-project.org
Subject: Re: [R] Inefficiency of SAS Programming

Yes Greg,

but if you're buying SAS they'll throw in IML pretty cheaply - SAS
think
it's only for a few nerds out there who wan to do funny stuff.

G



             Greg Snow
             <Greg.Snow at imail.
             org>
To
             Sent by:                  "Gerard M. Keogh"
             r-help-bounces at r-         <GMKeogh at justice.ie>, Frank E
             project.org               Harrell Jr
                                       <f.harrell at vanderbilt.edu>

cc
             27/02/2009 19:05          "r-help-bounces at r-project.org"
                                       <r-help-bounces at r-project.org>,
R
                                       list <r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch>

Subject
                                       Re: [R] Inefficiency of SAS
                                       Programming










But SAS/IML is not part of base SAS, it costs extra, so there is a good
chance that a user that has SAS will not be able to run code that uses
SAS/IML.

I have known of SAS programmers who know IML well that still write
matrix/vector tools using macros or proc transpose so that a user
without
IML can still use the code (the fact that the code that started this
thread
was found on a website, suggests that it was meant for general use
rather
than something only used internally where you know what add-ons will be
available).

Just another way that R makes life easier for both programmer and user.


--
Gregory (Greg) L. Snow Ph.D.
Statistical Data Center
Intermountain Healthcare
greg.snow at imail.org
801.408.8111

-----Original Message-----
From: r-help-bounces at r-project.org [mailto:r-help-bounces at r-
project.org] On Behalf Of Gerard M. Keogh
Sent: Friday, February 27, 2009 7:19 AM
To: Frank E Harrell Jr
Cc: r-help-bounces at r-project.org; R list
Subject: Re: [R] Inefficiency of SAS Programming

Yes Frank, I accept your point but nevertheless IML is the proper

place

for
matrix work in SAS - mixing macro-level logic and computation is
another
question - R is certainly more seemless in this respect.

Gerard



             Frank E Harrell
             Jr
             <f.harrell at vander
To
             bilt.edu>                 "Gerard M. Keogh"
                                       <GMKeogh at justice.ie>
             27/02/2009 13:55
cc
                                       R list <r-
help at stat.math.ethz.ch>,
                                       r-help-bounces at r-project.org

Subject
                                       Re: [R] Inefficiency of SAS
                                       Programming










Gerard M. Keogh wrote:

Frank,

I can't see the code you mention - Web marshall at work - but I

don't

think

you should be too quick to run down SAS - it's a powerful and

flexible

language but unfortunately very expensive.

Your example mentions doing a vector product in the macro language

-

this

only suggest to me that those people writing the code need a crash

course

in SAS/IML (the matrix language). SAS is designed to work on

records

and
so

is inapproprorriate for matrices - macros are only an efficient

code

copying device. Doing matrix computations in this way is pretty mad

and
the

code would be impossible never mind the memory problems.
SAS recognise that but a lot of SAS users remain familiar with IML.

In IML by contrast there are inner, cross and outer products and a

raft
of

other useful methods for matrix work that R users would be familiar

with.

OLS for example is one line:

b = solve(X`X, X`y) ;
rss = sqrt(ssq(y - Xb)) ;

And to give you a flavour of IML's capabilities I implemented a SAS

version

of the MARS program in it about 6 or 7 years ago.
BTW SPSS also has a matrix language.

Gerard

But try this:

PROC IML;
... some custom user code ...
... loop over j=1 to 10 ...
...   PROC GENMOD, output results back to IML
...

IML is only a partial solution since it is not integrated with the

PROC

step.

Frank

             Frank E Harrell
             Jr
             <f.harrell at vander

To

             bilt.edu>                 R list <r-

help at stat.math.ethz.ch>

             Sent by:

cc

             r-help-bounces at r-
             project.org

Subject

                                       [R] Inefficiency of SAS

Programming

             26/02/2009 22:57



If anyone wants to see a prime example of how inefficient it is to
program in SAS, take a look at the SAS programs provided by the US
Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality for risk adjusting and
reporting for hospital outcomes at
http://www.qualityindicators.ahrq.gov/software.htm .  The

PSSASP3.SAS

program is a prime example.  Look at how you do a vector product in

the

SAS macro language to evaluate predictions from a logistic

regression

model.  I estimate that using R would easily cut the programming

time

of

this set of programs by a factor of 4.

Frank
--
Frank E Harrell Jr   Professor and Chair           School of

Medicine

                      Department of Biostatistics   Vanderbilt

University

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Frank E Harrell Jr   Professor and Chair           School of Medicine
                      Department of Biostatistics   Vanderbilt
University

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