Customer Reviews

SAS Programming by Example

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

If you are learning SAS, you will probably find this book to be very helpful. The manuals that come with SAS are very diffuse, and furthermore, don't have enough examples, giving you mainly syntax. On the other hand, this book extracts a useful subset of the SAS system that is spread over many of the SAS manuals, and illustrates it with numerous simple, well-chosen examples.

One thing that sets this book apart from many of the other after-market SAS books for beginners is that it gives some nice hints as to how to write efficient SAS code, which quickly becomes important when you are dealing with large data sets.

Overall, the book is nicely organized, and well-suited to being used as a reference after you read it. It belongs on the desk of every beginning to intermediate SAS programmer. (If you are a true beginner, you might want to start with Delwiche and Slaughter's "The Little SAS Book: A Primer" for a completely painless introduction to the SAS system.)

This book might be great for someone who has never used SAS before, and has also never used any kind of programming language at all.

For just about everyone else, this book is simply too simple. I'm not a SAS guru by any means, but there was absolutely nothing in here that I hadn't already picked up in a few months of playing around with SAS.

Two other books I'd recommend for peolpe who need any kind of depth would be "Applied Statistics and the SAS Programming Language" (by Cody and Smith) and "SAS Applications Programming" (by Dilorio).

I am new to SAS, and I want to learn quickly. I am not a computer programmer, and syntax is not the fastest way for me to learn. This book works well for me: I learn from looking at code examples paired with clear narrative and brief output. I give the authors great credit for the ingenuity of their style (which saves me time/money). Although the book is perhaps far from comprehensive, it is the SAS book I value most right now.

This book is helpful for beginner users. It was invaluable to me in learning SAS programming, with great examples of all the basic concepts and operations. It's concise and pretty well-written. (By the way, there's also a helpful "SAS Workbook" that goes along with this, written also by Cody. The Workbook has many exercises to help you get started with SAS).

This book needs introductory knowledge of sas. The content borders on the edge though. It lacks on a couple of key points such as ODS, Macros and Proc Report which are very essential in a real-world situation. I read this book and the little sas book cover to cover. The little sas book would beat this to pulp. Definitely needs a revised edition.

I have been writing SAS code off and on for quite some time and this is my favorite go-to reference book. If you are new to SAS, I recommend you start with "The Little SAS Book". This book would be my second purchase, and finally, I would also pick up "SAS Functions by Example". Between these three books and learning a strong fundamental knowledge of SQL, you should be able to do about 95% of what you'll ever need to do in SAS (unless you are doing hard-core stats).

Along with these books the most valuable concepts I have learned in SAS are 'by group' processing, and the first. and last. statements.

I also recommend not attempting to memorize programming statements or syntax; keep examples of code that you may find useful in the future and keep good reference books - like this one - don't try to memorize what you can look up.

Finally, my recommendation is to KISS....Keep It Simple Stupid. You can do many things in SAS (actually almost anything), often in many different ways; some are very straightforward, and some are convoluted. I go with straightforward any day as you never know who will inherit your code for review or maintenance (believe me you'll often curse the code you'll soon inherit from someone else!). My experience is that programmers by nature often want to complicate code by using by using obscure techniques(remember, this is their 'art'!), avoid that trap and do everyone a favor.

Good luck and I hope you enjoy using SAS as much as I have!

This book, while very useful when it was written, is now replaced by a more update book containing approximately twice the material as the old book. I recommend that you look at Learning SAS by Example before you buy this book. Here is a link:
Learning SAS by Example: A Programmer's Guide

On the whole, the book is very good in that in general it consists of short self-contained programs: the input, the code, and the output, with discussion. Unfortunately, later in the book the authors got tired of the above and in many cases do not provide the output.

Also, the authors indulge in numerous parenethetical asides that are supoosed to be humorous but are just silly and interruptive.

Still, on balance it is a good (though outrageously overpriced) book.

This edition is a bit outdated yet I find it to still be fundamentally sound. It is a great resource and reference. The format has always intrigued me.

Hi,

There are times when you may get data sets that were entered in formats that are not compatible with the PROC you are using. In terms of teaching one how to use arrays and loops to restructure data sets, this book is a gold mine. If you analyze data from PROC SQL against databases then you probably won't need all of what is in this book. I have used this book for several consulting engagements and even if you program in SPSS, this s a great book to have in your arsenal.