Campus Researchers: Specific Y2K Computer Concerns

Statistics and mathematics programs
Computers integrated with or attached to research equipment
Y2K requirements of federal funding agencies

Related documents

Is your research data at risk from Y2K?
(article appearing in the Summer 1999 issue of Berkeley Computing and Communications )
Statistics programs and Y2K: Are you at risk?
(article appearing in the November-December 1999 issue of Berkeley Computing and Communications )
Cornell University, Year 2000 Project Office, Y2K for Researchers: an Online Newsletter
Office of Environmental Health and Safety, UC Berkeley, Planning for Power Failures: Tips for Laboratories

Specific Y2K issues that may be of concern to campus researchers include:

Statistics and mathematics programs

If you're using statistical, mathematical, or modelling programs to analyze research data, you'll need to make sure that Y2K problems don't endanger the integrity of your data, analysis, or conclusions. In particular, there are two primary areas of concern with statistics programs:

1. Some versions of certain statistics programs, including BMDP and most versions of SPSS, are not Y2K compliant.
   
   To ensure that you do not encounter Y2K problems when using these programs, you will need to install your vendors' no-cost Y2K updates or, in some cases, upgrade to newer versions of these applications.
   
   
2. Dates with two-digit years can be interpreted as falling into an incorrect century.
   
   Unless you specify otherwise, some statistics programs will assume that all two-digit-year dates fall into the 1900s, so a date such as "02/18/00" might be interpreted as February 18, 1900, rather than February 18, 2000, as you may have intended. (Other programs may make different default assumptions when handling such dates.) If your program's default assumptions aren't consistent with your actual data, some dates in your observations might be interpreted as falling into an incorrect century.
   
   To resolve these problems, either expand all dates to use four-digit years or use the workarounds suggested by your statistics program vendor, if any, to allow safe handling of two-digit year dates. See Resources on the Web discussing Y2K issues in stat and math programs for links to documents covering such workarounds.
   
   
3. SAS "applications," SPSS "programs," and other custom-written statistical programs could have Y2K problems when performing calculations involving date values. Such calculations include comparing dates, computing the duration between dates, and identifying the day of the week.
   
   To resolve these problems, carefully review all custom-written code that handles dates. See Resources on the Web discussing Y2K issues in stat and math programs for links to documents discussing how to review your statistical programs for Y2K problems. In addition, Custom Applications: Finding & Resolving Y2K Problems provides general information about finding and resolving Y2K problems in custom-written programming code.

There are two types of resources that may help you find and resolve such problems:

A campus consulting service available on an hourly recharge basis

Central Computing Services (CCS) offers consulting on an hourly fee basis through its Academic Computing Services (ACS) group. ACS can provide application program Y2K remediation for statistical applications (SAS and SPSS). And, depending on the size and scope of the project, ACS may also be able to provide help with applications written in Fortran or C. Their hourly rate is $63.
For inquiries, contact: ACS Manager Sherry Rogers at smrogers@socrates.berkeley.edu or (510) 642-7157. CCS is a department of Information Systems & Technology.

In addition to CCS's ACS group, there are several other campus recharge services that can assist your department in finding and resolving a variety of Y2K problems on its departmental computers.

Resources on the Web discussing Y2K issues in stat and math programs

If you're finding and resolving Y2K problems on your own, you might find the following resources to be helpful:

Statistical Computing and the Year 2000

From UCLA's Office of Academic Computing, this site provides detailed information on Y2K issues in SAS, SPSS, and Stata. Included are many links to white papers from OAC, documents from statistics software vendors such as the SAS Institute, Inc. and SPSS, Inc., and other sources of helpful information. Of particular note are techniques that you can use to safely handle data containing two-digit-year dates.

If you're using SAS, SPSS, or Stata, we highly recommend that you visit this excellent site!

Year 2000 and Stat/Math Software

From Indiana University's Stat/Math Center, this page briefly summarizes the Y2K compliance status of 30 statistics and mathematics packages and subroutine libraries. Included are links to some vendor Y2K pages.

We recommend that you do not rely solely on any second-hand summaries of the Y2K compliance status of various products, including any summaries which may appear on this page or elsewhere on this Web site. Instead, you should always check with your products' current vendors (through their Web sites or otherwise) to directly obtain their Y2K compliance statements for your critical products. This way, you'll be sure to obtain: The most up-to-date compliance information. (Sometimes second-hand summaries are out-of-date.) Additional compliance details or qualifications you need to know. (Sometimes second-hand summaries don't include these details.)

If you're using spreadsheets or databases to store or analyze research data, we suggest that you also see:

• Commercial Off-the-Shelf Applications: Finding & Resolving Y2K Problems
• Data Files: Finding & Resolving Y2K Problems

Computers integrated with or attached to research equipment

• Contact the vendor of your research equipment. They may be able to offer recommendations - and cautions - specific to your research equipment model.
  
  If the vendor of your research equipment provided you with your PC or workstation as a component of that equipment, their maintenance contract could potentially cover fixing or replacing your computer to resolve its Y2K problems.
  
  
• Check for recommendations in this area, if any, from the UC Berkeley campus's Year 2000 Departmental Research Equipment Subcommittee .

Y2K requirements of federal funding agencies

This page includes links to the Web pages of representative US Federal government funding agencies which have imposed Y2K compliance requirements on principal investigators who have received grants or contracts from those agencies.

If you've received funding from one of these agencies, be sure to determine which of these requirements, if any, could potentially dictate what work you should do, and how and when you should do it, when finding and resolving Y2K problems on your microcomputers and workstations.

As an obvious starting point, exclusive of any specific requirements imposed by your funding agency, you'll likely need to resolve such problems so as to have a very high degree of confidence that Y2K problems will not adversely affect such areas as human and animal health and safety; the integrity of research data, both when gathering and analyzing such data; and the accurate tracking of expenditures of research funds.