IITA-Kano station hosts SAS training

Participants at the SAS training in Kano

ITA Kano station in collaboration with ICRISAT Nigeria hosted a week’s training on Statistics and Statistical Computing Course with SAS. The participants were drawn from IITA, ICRISAT, and other partners from Ahmadu Bello Univerisity, Zaria; and Bayero University, Kano. There were also participants from the Federal Ministry of Agriculture, the Agricultural Research Council of Nigeria, and the Lake Chad Research Institute.

The training was facilitated by Mr Sam Ofodile and Mrs Olayemi Oluwasoga of the Biometrics Unit in IITA-Ibadan who coached the 27 participants from Monday 16 to Friday 20 December 2013.

In his opening speech, Dr Alpha Kamara, IITA Station Representative urged participants to pay attention to the training and highlighted the importance of the training to scientific writing.

The one-week intensive training taught participants how to:

• Use Genstat – Introduction to the software

•  Write SAS codes and complex data management

• Generate descriptive statistics and explore data with graphs

• Generate and interpret sample statistics using the UNIVARIATE and MEANS procedures

• Detect associations among variables

• Perform analysis of variance and apply multiple comparison techniques

• Perform linear and multiple regression and assess the assumptions

• Fit a multiple and binomial logistic regression model

• Perform multivariate analysis

The training was formally closed on Friday afternoon with the presentation of certificates by Mr Ado Rabo, IITA Station Administrator.