RASC and CASC

5 RASC & CASC MANUAL
Summary of the RASC and CASC Programs
RASC is an acronym for ranking and scaling of biostratigraphic events; CASC stands for
correlation and standard error calculation, and COR for correspondence analysis; MAKEDAT
imports and edits datasets.
The programs are designed to:
a. input/import and edit microfossil event data as input into RASC, using MAKEDAT
b. interactively calculate zonations with variance analysis and normality tests, using RASC
c. interactively calculate well to well correlations with error analysis, using CASC
d. analyse paleoecologic/geographic trends, using COR
Data sets may vary from 4 to 100 (or many more) wells or outcrop sections, depending on
requirements.
The four programs operate as a single and integrated executable module under Windows ®.
One windowing master menu controls all operations and results. Graphics results are displayed
in colour, and may be edited with a built-in 2D chart control program; graphs can be colour
printed and saved, many of them in JPEG format.
Alternatively, all results are also expressed in ASCII-type output files that may be browsed
with the built-in DOS editor. These files may be formatted and printed with a word processor,
using a non-proportional font like ‘courier’.
Method and Programs
The four programs in the RASC& CASC module perform the following functions:
MAKEDAT
• stores the fossil event records of a great many taxa of different microfossil groups in
wells (< 500)
• creates and orders a taxon dictionary, with synonyms for each taxon
• re-orders well sites in the master file
• creates subsets of the master data file that exclude specific well sites or specific taxa
• reformats (subset) data files for input in quantitative stratigraphy programs RASC,
CASC and COR