Paper 432-2013 Current Directions in SAS/STAT ® Software Development

Recent years brought you SAS/STAT ® releases in rapid succession, and another release is targeted for 2013. Which new software features will make a difference in your work? What new statistical trends should you know about? This paper describes recent areas of development focus, such as Bayesian analysis, missing data analysis, postfitting inference, quantile modeling, finite mixture models, specialized survival analysis, and structural equation modeling. This paper introduces you to the concepts and illustrates them with practical examples. More Frequent Releases of SAS/STAT Software In previous years, SAS/STAT software was updated only when Base SAS ® software was released, but SAS/STAT is now released independently of Base SAS along with other SAS analytical products. This means these products can be released when enhancements are ready, and the goal is to update SAS/STAT every 12 to 18 months. To mark this newfound independence, the release numbering scheme for SAS analytical products has also changed; the current production release is SAS/STAT 12.1. With the new release paradigm, SAS provides you with new statistical techniques faster. However, it may be difficult to keep track of all of the new development. This paper provides a round-up of the current direction