Customer Reviews

The Little SAS Book: A Primer

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

SAS APPEAL
One of the best introductions to SAS, the "little purple book" is now in its 3rd edition (November 2003; ISBN: = 1590473337). Compared with the previous version (this one)," the 3rd edition includes more information on preparing reports and tables, and exporting data. However, the basic format and organization is the same.

This book is organized into 8 chapters, with six appendices, and an index. The overall organization is clear-- one topic leads clearly to the next (contrast this with the overly concise "Getting Started with the SQL Procedure," also by SAS). The book clearly assumes no previous SAS knowledge, although covering operating systems (e.g., Windows, your local workstation or mainframe) is beyond the book's scope. Previous experience with any data entry, data management, or programming will be very helpful, but is not essential. Each chapter is organized into two-page topics (these range from 7 topics in the MACRO chapter to 20 in the overly long data entry chapter) with introductory paragraphs, examples that include a small data set, and programming related to the topic. Programming language related to the new topic is shaded to distinguish it from material already covered or otherwise irrelevant. Because of the mini-data sets for each topic, you don't have to keep returning to datasets presented at the beginning only (as you do with some introductory texts). The reason for using the language, the data, the example, and the output are all there on the 2 facing pages; it's very easy to use.

In 217 well-written pages, the book advances from the very introductory (e.g., every SAS line ends with a semicolon; think of columns as variables, and rows as observations) to techniques (e.g., the chapter on MACROS) and programming "tricks" useful to those with years of experience (the too-brief chapter on debugging programs, the section on the always difficult MERGE statement). This is the challenge of an introductory book: It needs to teach the basics, but not so basic that one can finish the entire book in a couple of hours. Delwiche and Slaughter handle this task superbly. Chapter 1, for example, explains basic SAS concepts (the database, the data step, procedures, viewing and printing output), and a few pages on SAS for Windows. (The authors occasionally refer to SAS for Windows ("PC SAS"); this is valuable for those who have this software but otherwise extraneous.) Still, after nearly 15 years of SAS experience, I turn to this book when I want a concise yet easily understood explanation of something I may have not used for awhile. After mastering this book, I recommend that users follow it with the somewhat more advanced "SAS Programming for Researchers and Social Scientists" (Paul Spector) and/or "Cody's Data Cleaning Techniques (Ron Cody).

Chapters are as follows (I've added a sample topic in parentheses after each chapter title):

1. Getting Started Using SAS Software ("The Two Parts of a SAS Program")
2. Getting Your Data into the SAS System ("Reading Raw Data...")
3. Working with Your Data ("Subsetting Your Data")
4. Sorting, Printing, and Summarizing Your Data ("Summarizing Your Rata with PROC MEANS")
5. Modifying and Combining SAS Data Sets (Combining Data Sets Using a One-to-Many Match Merge")
6. Writing Flexible Code with the SAS Macro Facility ("Macro Concepts")
7. Using Basic Statistical Procedures ("Using PROC REG for Simple Regression Analysis")
8. Debugging Your SAS Programs ("DATA Step Produces Wrong Results but No Error Message")

The book's main problem is Chapter 2. The lengthy material on inputting data will be irrelevant for most students, as datasets are often already prepared. Still, because one may sometimes need to create a dataset, the chapter is useful. In addition, chapter 8, doesn't contain include enough on error detection and debugging programs, an extremely important SAS skill that helps one detect and distinguish programming and dataset errors. Also the Appendix on resources, "Where to Go from Here," mentions SAS Institute published books only, although this is partly due to the paucity of well written SAS books by independent authors when the second edition came out in 1998 (compared with today). Overall, while this much-loved book is much loved by those who took their first SAS steps with it. I recommend the new edition (3rd) edition; it has more topics and is more current, for only slightly more money.

This Second Edition is good for up to SAS 8.x. For 9.x, you may want to wait until the Third Edition comes out in August, 2003. Also, SAS indicates that there is a "Revised" Second Edition (ISBN: 1-59047-113-X). However, I have not read it and don't know if it is better than its predecessor.

This book (2nd ed.) is very thorough on the "operational" commands, but less so on the "statistical" procedures, which seems to be the whole point of using SAS. Any experienced programmer should be able to do file I/O, data selection, and report formatting in a day or two after reading this book. But to do even something as simple as a t-test, you will have to pull that information from other sources. The authors claim that "[o]nce you have mastered the procedures in this book, the other statistical procedures should feel similar". I tend to agree with them, but I still think that such intended omission is a shortcoming. And for that reason, I give this book a 4 out of 5.

This book is concise and has many of the key ideas that beginning SAS programmers need. It is a good reference even for advanced SAS programmers but does not go far beyond the basics. If you use SAS regularly this will not have enough information for you. However, it is the quickest way to find out how to do something basic that you either have never done or forgot how to do. I only have the 2nd edition, so I can't comment on any changes that may be incorporated in the third edition.

This book helped me get started writing simple SAS programs, but I was soon in need of a more extensive language reference book in order to accomplish anything slightly different than the samples included in the book. The book's value would have been greatly enhanced by the inclusion of appendicies of SAS functions, etc. I was also left wondering what SAS offers beyond the basic level. A list of advanced features with some brief explanation of utility would have been helpful.

This is a wonderful book for the beginning SAS user. It provides very well thought out examples that are easy to understand. I have been teaching and working with SAS for many years. This is the best introductory book I have found.

This is a great book for people who already have some knowledge of SAS, but do not use it really often. The book is often short on example but is a great resource when you are looking for the exact coding. This book is more user freindly than the SAS manual and give you the code you need on a regular basis, proc freq, reg, date format.....

One limitation of this book was the lack of advance techniques. But if you need a small SAS reference book next to your computer "the little sas book " should be it.

This book gives a nice review of the key SAS topics. The information is very condensed, very well structured and organized. It begins with the basics and goes deeper, so this book is perfect for people looking for a quick way to get started with SAS. You'll probably need a day to read it through to get a pretty good idea what SAS is about. Of course, this format has some drawbacks. Typically you read this book faster then you can digest the information. So even if you can finish the book in a few hours, it will still take days to understand the topics. Most subjects include one example. That gives you an idea, but if you have your own problem and want to find a similar example, you'll probably be out of luck. Since most of the examples are quick few liners, the book doesn't really teach you how to approach a complex data crunching projects. It would help a lot if you already know some computer language, otherwise, the book may look too fast pace for you.

Also, despite the high density of the information, the authors managed to keep the language easy to read.

When used as a textbook to complement an instructor this book is useful - in two pages you can find a brief explanation and an example to illustrate the point. For a SAS user needing a quick reference - great as well. For someone just sitting down with SAS for the first time with no instruction or experience, this may leave a few holes and many questions, though stepping through the examples step by step (and not trying to get too far ahead of yourself) will tend to answer your own questions. A very useful resource.

I own almost every introductory book on SAS in print, and this one is used the least. The most use it gets is when someone who has absolutely no experience with SAS comes to me for help - then I can loan this book. It is very easy to read and assumes no knowledge of SAS. It has a few tips that are hard to find in other books at this level, but otherwise falls short.

What you will find here is a tutorial on the basics of the SAS/Base package, how to read in data, and a few basic procedures. It covers this material well, but it is not enough unless you are taking a course and have another resource such as lecture notes to do anything really useful. It does not really cover SAS/Stat. I have used the book as the text in a course I taught, as supplementary to my lecture notes. If I taught the same course again, I would choose a different book, such as Cody. The Little SAS Book is a nice book to get started, but will not be the only book you need.

As a new user to SAS, I was told this was the book to get. But I quickly found out that it was a useless book for beginners. It is very short on substance and has very little in the form of examples to guide you along. The book offers bare bones SAS syntax with little to help you build your SAS skills. I would not recommend this book. Instead, I would opt for a book with more details and SAS syntax example.