Some of the commands can have different options attached to them. An option appears in square brackets in the list above and when the manual describes each command. An option can be selected or not, and sometimes more than one option can be selected. SUMMARY has an option, RANKS, which makes it print out a list of values in rank order together with values for rank, percentage and cumulative percentage. An option can often be abbreviated down to the first letter, although the whole word can be typed for clarity. Taking the above example one could enter:
SUMMARY RANKS C1 IF (C2-C3)<7or:
s r c1 if (c2-c3)<7If the "r" is left out, the SUMMARY command will do exactly the same thing but without also producing the rank/frequency table:
s c1 if (c2-c3)<7The other option available in SUMMARY is IF followed by a condition which specifies which rows to study. IF is exceptional in that it must be written in full, just "I" would not be adequate. This option similarly can be left out, in which cases all the rows will be included in the analysis:
s c1or:
SUMMARY C1When using the SUMMARY command it is obligatory to specify the column for which the statistics are to be provided. For some of other the commands a column or filename is shown as being optional by being put in square brackets. This means that you do not have to type the column in the command line, but then you will be asked by EASISTAT to specify which column you mean in a second line. It's just a question of convenience for you whether you put the column into the command line or not. When you first start to use EASISTAT it is better just to select a command and then EASISTAT will ask you for other details, but as you grow more familiar with the program you may feel like typing more into the first line. There is an important point however. Although if you omit a necessary parameter like a column number you will usually be asked to supply it, in contrast if you omit an option like RANKS or IF from the command line you cannot add it in later in a second line. All the command options must be specified in the command line.