Learning SAS by Example: A Programmer's Guide

This book is probably the best place to start if you want to learn SAS programming. You can literally start on page one and work your way through the book. By the end of the book you will be a good intermediate programmer but by no means an advanced programmer. The book is about programming, manipulation of data and presentation of data. You will not learn about statistical analysis at all. Macro programming and Proc SQL are only touched very briefly at the end of the book. This means you have to by separate books to learn those topics. But it is a good idea to read the book before starting on Macro programming. What I like the most about the book is that it is very easy to read and almost everything is well explained. Every chapter ends with a number of exercises and I choose to do almost all of them. The exercises are short and generally easy. In most cased you just have to modify an example form the book to do the exercise. This means the exercises are good to teach you the syntax in the programming. But they are not advanced enough to teach you how to structure advanced programs or think for yourself. The books downside is that it is printed in black and white which is annoying where you read the SAS code. Although it is a less of a problem in this book than in most other programming books printed in black and white. It is apparent that book is getting quiet old. The syntax of the code has not changed, but the book are based on SAS base and not SAS EG which is going to be SAS's primary editor in the future. This means that all the nice features of SAS EG are not mentioned.

I've taken three graduate stats classes that had the students use SAS to do the work. Each prefaced itself by the statement "this is not a programming class." The teacher showed examples of doing multiple linear regressions, logistic regression, Poisson regression, etc., but otherwise we were on our own. What a frustrating trip! Not only does SAS use an ancient 1970's style programming architecture, they reuse keywords radically differently in different contexts, think of data tables differently from other familiar software, and their online help is vast and a mystery in itself. Over half the time I spent in class was just trying to figure out how SAS worked. So I bought this book. It doesn't teach statistics. It teaches the programming architecture behind the software. It does this very well with a logical progression, clear examples, and well-chosen exercises (half with programming solutions). Dedicate a few hours every other day for a few months and SAS will become a useful tool, not a complete burden. Make sure you get the CD. You need it for the datasets used in the exercises.

I use SAS a lot in my job, and this book was really a great help in learning tha basics. It's easy to understand, clear and concise, with plenty of examples and exercises. You should work thorugh it, write every program and do every exercise (you remember a lot more if you actually type all the code), otherwise you will miss some of the basics. But of course, you could just skip to what you need to for a specific purpose.

This is a much better value than the courses SAS offers. With this book, you can proceed at your own pace; programmers and non-programmers will be comfortable. The book doesn't cover statistical procedures, but it does cover a great variety of data management techniques. Those skills are essential for real-life statistical analysis. Finally, the book will introduce the reader to many advanced topics, and suggest clear next steps. Overall, it's a great place to start.

This is a good place to start after you have exhausted the little sas book.

Having used SAS for 9 years, I thought I might not learn a lot from this book. I was wrong. Although the examples are simple (which is a good thing, in my opinion) and can be understood by a beginning SAS user, the explanations explain WHY the code works the way it does. This combination of simple examples with in-depth explantions sets the book apart. I also like that the sections are brief - even if you only have 10 or 15 minutes a day, you can read a section and learn something new. Excellent book!

All of Cody's books are good ways to learn more about SAS. If you want to get certified you need to get the University Edition of SAS and work through their prep guides. The Base SAS prep guide has problems. You should work with Cody to start so you learn something about SAS- you'll need to know a fair amount to compensate for the problems in the study guides.

This book is a very easy read. It gives many examples, and explains concepts step by step. The text also repeats many concepts which is great when you are attempting to learn the language. The index is wonderful as well. It lists everywhere in the book that a topic is covered. It is definitely worth the money. Other students who spent $90 on a diffferent book saw how easy mine was to understand went back and bought this one.