Customer Reviews

Categorical Data Analysis Using the SAS System

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3 star:		(1)
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I've used the first edition of the book for my own data analysis more than once. It is an invaluable tool for translating statistical theory into practical knowledge. I often read statistical texts, think I understand them, but have no idea how to use that knowledge with a statistical package. This book takes the reader step by step through the theory, with each chapter adding a logical next layer of complexity. All along are SAS examples interspersed with theory so writing programs and interpreting output are greatly simplified. It may be necessary to read the entire book if your data is relatively complicated and the appropriate analysis is covered towards the end of the book, but the effort is well worth it. I have never so well understood the rationale for the statistical tests I've done. I have had a class in SAS, so this book may be too difficult for someone totally unfamiliar with SAS, but I am by no means an expert and have been able to write programs to do everything I wanted. I used this book in conjunction with the SAS/STAT user's guide and found both together totally adequate for my needs.

Almost all data analysis projects involve categorical data, and this text is an excellent reference. More than just a how-to manual for using SAS to do the analysis, it provides excellent practical advice from model selection to interpretation of results. Every example is complete with code, output, and thorough discussion of the research questions, conclusions, and interpretations. For several examples, more than one approach is illustrated. As a statistical consultant, this has been the book I used most often for reference with discrete data analysis. While it is not a replacement for a graduate text such as Agresti, it is an excellent resource for an applied statistician.

This book gets at the fundamentals of statistical analysis that are lacking in many other volumes. It starts off with analyzing the smallest units within an experimental design and works up from there. A great practitioner's reference--even for the non-SAS user.

The second edition of this book has two ISBNs: 1-58025-710-0 under SAS Institute and 0-471-22424-3 under John Wiley & Sons. In spite of what Amazon displays, both books have only 426 pages of content+index and are copyrighted in year 2000. The Wiley version just has a few more pages of catalog. Other than that, you pay different prices for exactly the same thing.

As for the usefulness of this book, I think its reputation speaks for itself. While this book orients around code examples, it is not shy of laying out the theoretical groundwork to let readers know why it is doing what it is doing. Chapters 1 through 7 give a solid introduction to PROC FREQ, and thoroughly cover all forms of 2- and 3-way contingency tables. The only shortcoming is its lack of details on concordant statistics such as Sommer's D. (Section 5.4.1 is a bit short.) To fill that gap, I recommend Bayo Lawal's "Categorical Data Analysis with SAS and SPSS Applications". The rest of the book (chapters 8 through 17) mainly drills on major topics such as PROC LOGISTIC, PROC CATMOD, and PROC GENMOD. But it also covers PROC RANK, PROC PHREG, PROC NPAR1WAY, PROC IML, and even ODS. However, the second edition barely made the updates for SAS 8.1, and is currently slightly out-of-sync with the latest release of SAS 9.1 as of 2007.

All in all, this book provides not only quick access to complete SAS codes for use in practical scenarios, but also insightful information on goodness-of-fit, diagnostics, missing data handling, and other important but often overlooked matters. As much ground as this book covers, it only requires minimal SAS programming skills and only some decent knowledge of categorical data analysis on readers' part. Everyone should be able to find something relevant to his purpose (and make use of it) in the variety of examples in this thoughtfully written book.

I have the luxury of taking categorical data analysis with Dr. Koch (one of the author's of this book), and his depth of experience using SAS for categorical data analysis is definitely demonstrated in this book. If you need to know how to analyze categorical data using SAS, this book is a necessity; it includes almost all the code/option statements you'll need to do every flavor of categorical test, including exact tests. The downside is this book is light on theory, and I find myself going back to my general biostats tome for explanations of some topics. This book probably also isn't going to work for you if you need a book on categorical stats using a package other than SAS or if you've never used SAS before. All in all, if you like or need to use SAS for your work, this book paired with your favorite general stats tome is pretty much everything you'll need to completely dissect non-continuous data.

If you really want to be an expert on categorical analysis, you must have this book, well written and great examples especially if you have an introductory to stats.

This book is an excellent guide to the practical implementation of categorical data analysis methods. I use it all the time.
While it's true that you need some background in statistical theory to really use theses methods effectively, the authors provide helpful reminders and overviews. The also employ interesting examples and give variations on SAS code to illustrate -- step-by-step -- how a good analysis should proceed.
This book is a very good value for anyone who uses categorical methods.

Useful statistics textbook form SAS company. With millions of good examples, most related to bio or medical. I like it. Too heavy though. :P

If you want to know how to use SAS to do applied statistical analysis on categorical data, this book is a good one. It shows every step in SAS coding, how to explain results from SAS output. It does not go deep in terms of statistical theories, but it tells right situations to which each method applies. To me, the advantage of this book is that it is arranged clearly, I never lose forest while reading trees.

The book I bought reached me in time and it's in good condition, plus it's useful, so I'm happy with it.