STA 402/502 Homework Guidelines
Please turn in a printed copy of your homework. Homework must be formatted for clarity and professionalism. Each problem solution must be presented using the following items in the order shown here:
Problem number/letter. A clear indication as to the problem number.
Documented code in a fixed-width font for addressing the problem.
Documentation must include a nontrivial header comment block indicating what the program does; light comments throughout the code; meaningful variable names; sensible indentation and spacing for readability; RUN and DATA= statements. Long code lines should be split in the SAS editor beforehand so that they don't “wrap around” (thereby breaking the indentation) in the document you turn in.
Your code should be supplied as it is written in SAS (one program). Do NOT segment up submitted code into parts (e.g., code chunk for part (a) of a problem).
Selected output copied from the RTF file or other specified output destination.
Unless otherwise indicated in the assignment or by the instructor, all output tables and graphs that you turn in should be directed to the ODS RTF destination. You may shrink figures and tables slightly to fit them on fewer pages, provided that they are still clearly legible and the dimensions are not distorted. You should manually adjust background colors in tables to ensure that lettering shows up clearly in the printed version you turn in. Tables that can fit on one page must not be broken across pages. Table titles must appear on the same page at the top of their corresponding table.
Answers/conclusions: After the selected output, you should include answers or conclusions to the problem. Do not just show the output without answering questions.
The homework should be concise, you are expected to show good judgment in what you select from the actual output for inclusion. As a rule of thumb, very few of the assigned problems will require more than two or three pages of total output to be turned in.
For full credit, your code and output must meet all specifications indicated in the problem statement and the output must provide evidence that your code works as intended. For partial credit on non-working code, provide a representative sample of error messages from the LOG window and/or erroneous output sent to other destinations.
Tips:
It is strongly recommended that you place all materials into a single word-processing document (e.g., Microsoft Word) prior to printing it.
You can manually choose a fixed-width font in your word processor after pasting your copied code. Good choices include the Courier New and Lucida Console fonts.
Use the BODYTITLE option in the ODS RTF statement to place SAS titles in the main text instead of the page header sections. Use the STYLE=journal option in the ODS RTF statement to obtain a compact format and avoid dark table backgrounds.
When the output consists of narrow tables, you can sometimes horizontally stack the tables.
For examples of what is expected regarding code documentation and indentation, see Chapter 1 of the textbook and the various documented programs from the first few lectures.