Which procedure is commonly used to perform descriptive statistics in SAS?

The procedure commonly used to perform descriptive statistics in SAS is PROC MEANS. This procedure is specifically designed to calculate and summarize basic statistical measures, such as the mean, median, standard deviation, minimum, and maximum for numeric variables. By using PROC MEANS, users can easily generate summary statistics that help in understanding the central tendency and variability of data within their datasets.

This procedure is particularly versatile, as it allows for grouping by one or more categorical variables, enabling users to produce statistics across different segments of their data. Additionally, PROC MEANS can provide output in various forms, including summary reports or detailed listings, making it a powerful tool for data analysis.

While other procedures like PROC PRINT are useful for displaying data, and PROC FREQ is great for frequency counts of categorical variables, they do not focus on calculating descriptive statistics for numeric variables in the same comprehensive way that PROC MEANS does. PROC SORT is primarily used to organize data in a specific order, and while sorting can be beneficial before analysis, it does not provide any descriptive statistical measures by itself.