Which procedure can be used for generating summary statistics for numeric variables?

The procedure PROC SUMMARY is specifically designed for generating summary statistics for numeric variables in SAS. It computes a wide range of descriptive statistics such as the mean, minimum, maximum, and standard deviation, among others. This procedure allows users to specify the statistics they want to calculate and provides flexibility in summarizing data across different categories.

When using PROC SUMMARY, one can easily create summary tables by specifying an appropriate class variable, which enables the computation of statistics for subsets of the data. This is particularly useful in exploratory data analysis where understanding the distribution of numeric variables is crucial.

In contrast, PROC PRINT is intended for displaying data in a tabular format rather than summarizing it. Similarly, PROC CONTENTS provides a description of the data set, including variable attributes but does not perform calculations. Lastly, PROC SGPLOT is designed for creating visualizations and plots of data, not for producing summary statistics. Thus, PROC SUMMARY stands out as the correct choice for generating summary statistics.