[R] BMDP and SAS (was R in clinical trials)

[Terry Therneau]

  I used both BMDP and SAS in my earlier years, side by side.  At that
time the BMDP statistical methods were much more mature and
comprehensive: we treated them as the standard when the two packages
disagreed.  (It was a BMDP manual that clearly explained to me what the
hypothesis of "Yate's weighted mean test" is, something SAS decided to
call "type III" and eternally obfuscate by defining it in terms of a
computational algorithm).  
  The BMDP programs had reasonable facilities for data manipulation ---
not as strong as SAS but reasonable.  However each analysis program was
a separate run, so you had to cut and paste your block of setup code
onto the front of each program's instructions.  "Cut and paste" with a
keypunch machine is not quite as simple as with a mouse, if you needed a
listing, some frequencies, 2-3 regressions, ... it got rather tedious.

  Terry Therneau