Appendix B. Coming to SAS from SPSS

More often than not, the first question asked by people who know SPSS and want to learn SAS is, "How do the two software packages compare?" No simple answer is possible since both products are continually evolving, with new releases introducing new capabilities. Nonetheless, general comparisons can be drawn.

SAS and SPSS are very similar. Compared to other statistical software, these two products are similar because they are both based on languages. Compared to other computer languages such as C++, SAS and SPSS are similar because they both have powerful, built-in data handling and statistical capabilities.

Some SPSS users may not even know that SPSS has a programming language since many SPSS users use only the ...

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