When I first started doing statistical programming in 1978, I used SPSS, the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences. It was a FORTRAN based product, and used the same conventions as FORTRAN. That is your program had to be typed in columns 7 thru 72, etc. It was not very flexible. SAS, however, was PL/1 based, and free format. It was also much cheaper on I/O than SPSS. Even though SAS charged a 25% surcharge to use the product, it was cheaper to debug and run than SPSS. SAS was also much more proactive in marketing and providing free training. I took a week long 40 hour course in SAS at their expense. This may explain some of the divergence in SAS versus SPSS users. We used SPSS X 10 on a VAX around 1985 and it would bring the system to its knees. Now I have a user who runs a PC version and uses it mostly for the graphics capability. We have SAS for the PC but I have not had the opportunity to try and train these guys to use SAS instead of Lotus, Harvard Graphics, and the other legacy applications they are comfortable with.

************************************************************ Dianne Louise Rhodes drhodes@fenix2.dol-esa.gov Computer Data Systems, Inc. US Department of Labor, Office of Workers Comp Washington, DC 20210 ************************************************************