SAS Essentials: Mastering SAS for Data Analytics, 2nd Edition

APPENDIX C

CHOOSING A SAS^® PROCEDURE

The guidelines in this appendix help you determine the proper analysis to perform based on your data. In these tables the term Normal indicates that the procedure is based on a normality assumption. The term at least ordinal indicates that the data have an order.

C.1 DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS

Make decision by reading from the left to the right (Table C.1).

Table C.1 Decision Table for Descriptive Statistics

What Is the Data Type?	Statistical Procedures/SAS PROC
You want to describe a single variable.	Normal	Descriptive statistics: mean, standard deviation, etc. PROC MEANS, UNIVARIATE (Chapter 9)
Quantitative	Descriptive statistics, median, histogram, boxplots PROC UNIVARIATE (Chapters 9 and 18)
Categorical	Frequencies PROC FREQ, GCHART (Chapters 10 and 18)
You want to describe two related or paired variables.	Both are normal	Pearson's correlation and graphs PROC CORR, REG, GPLOT (Chapters 12 and 18)
Both are at least ordinal	Spearman's correlation and graphs PROC CORR, GPLOT (Chapters 12 and 18)
Both are categorical	Cross-tabulation (Chapters 10 and 18)

C.2 COMPARISON TESTS

Make decision by reading from the left to the right (Table C.2).

Table C.2 Decision Table for Comparison Tests

What Is the Data Type?	Procedure to Use/SAS PROC
You are comparing a single sample to a norm (gold standard).	Normal	Single-sample t-test PROC MEANS, UNIVARIATE (Chapter 11)
At least ordinal	Sign test PROC UNIVARIATE (Chapters ...