A Look At a New Way to Analyze Visual Data
September 12, 2017
A Look At a New Way to Analyze Visual Data
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with SAS Advanced Analytics
I currently use SAS Advanced Analytics to analyze data coming in from the state level Behavioral Health Risk Factor Surveillance System and the Youth Risk Behavior Survey. I focus on tobacco data and SAS is extremely important when looking at this data. I use SAS STAT to analyse the data using survey procedures. Because BRFSS and YRBS are complex surveys I must use the survey procedures in SAS to get weighted frequencies, means and estimates. It is extremely easy to use SAS for these analyses, because the procedures are pretty repetitive. However, I do wish that the strata, weight, and cluster variables did not have to be typed with each procedure done. When using STATA or SPSS these variables are entered once, and the weighted results are automatically given when writing procedure. No need to enter them in for each. However, I am more comfortable with SAS coding and really like that it is user friendly. The online support for SAS is wonderful as well.
- Complex Survey Analysis- SAS is a great resource if you need to analyze complex survey data. One can easily write code for this by inserting (survey) in front of the procedure with the weight, cluster, and strata variables. (ex: surveyfreq)
- Modeling/ Graphing- SAS creates clean and easy to understand graphs and models which take visual data to the next level.
- Support- There is a large SAS Advanced analytics online support in place. It is easy to find help on many procedures that you will use in this software.
- SAS requires a lot of coding compared to other software like STATA or SPSS. However most of the code is repetitive , an easy copy/paste.
- SAS Advanced Analytics is not always easily learned, most people would need some training before getting comfortable with the software.
- The layout of the modeling system may get confusing when too many different windows are open, may need to look at different graphs and models one at a time.
- SAS is pretty expensive, so a company would need to take that into consideration before purchasing a license.
- A lot of companies are now starting to use SAS Advance Analytics, it is great for sharing data between departments.
- Presentations come out better when using SAS, and estimates are more precise to the confidence interval.
SAS is faster then both SPSS and STATA. SAS also has better models and graphs when comparing the three softwares. However, STATA and SPSS are more user friendly. It is easy to use SPSS and STATA, because a lot of it is point-click. SAS requires some training to be able to use it as effectively as possible. SAS is better with large data sets, and it is easier to analyze many data points at the same time.