SAS Learning Edition 1.0 (CD-ROM)

by SAS Institute (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
SAS skills are in demand and hands-on knowledge is vital! Ideal for students and business professionals, SAS Learning Edition is a personal learning version of the world's leading business intelligence and analytical software. This software enables you to explore the powerful functionality of SAS with instruction paced for the beginner. Using either a point-and-click interface or the SAS windowing environment, you can import existing SAS code through a color-coded, syntax-checking code window or write your own SAS programs. You can discover how to organize and manipulate even the messiest data, learn a variety of statistical methods, and create Web reports and eye-catching color graphics. SAS Learning Edition software is capable of working on any size data file and providing limited data set results. The product contains a suite of SAS software products on a single CD-ROM, an online tutorial, and the book Getting Started with SAS Learning Edition

Product Details

• CD-ROM: 200 pages
• Publisher: SAS Publishing; Pap/Cdr edition (June 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1590470648
• ISBN-13: 978-1590470640
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7.5 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,452,205 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Looking forward to version 2.0, March 27, 2004

By A Customer

I'm giving SAS Learning Edition, version 1.0, 4 stars ... but I'm grading on a curve.

Before I get any further in writing this review, let me briefly go over my experience with SAS: A few years ago I used a fully functional SAS version 8 for financial econometrics. Having gotten that out of the way, here are my two cents on this Learning Edition.

First of all, I applaud the SAS Institute for coming out with a learners' edition of SAS for people's home PCs. Considering the advances in desktop computing over the last 20 years and the obvious benefits of promoting a product like SAS to a wide a group of numerate potential users out there, I'm frankly shocked that SAS Institute didn't do this sooner. When I was in school (which was not that long ago), the only thing that I could get for my personal computer from SAS was JMP, a misguided product which has no obvious purpose in the age of Excel with VBA add-ons being able to tackle much of what JMP can do and considering that JMP is too wimpy to compete with higher-level statistical/mathematical software applications like SAS itself.

The non-availability of a learners' version of SAS was particularly bizzare considering the fact that other competitive applications like SPSS, Mathematica, Matlab, Maple, etc., have had learners' versions for several years prior to SAS' efforts. Heck, statistical/mathematical software like R and Octave are absolutely free!

So I'm glad that the SAS Institute has done what they did. BUT - as many of the more critical and skeptical reviews before mine have pointed out - version 1.0 of this product definitely has some weaknesses. Those weaknesses include some annoying bugs as well as unreasonably limited functionality.

To be fair to SAS, it is not fair to expect them to offer full functionality at this relatively (relative to a SAS license) inexpensive price, especially with what is suppose to be a learning edition. However, there is a fine line between protecting the SAS franchise and not offering the degree of functionality that rationally should be offered to: (a) help learners truly learn SAS, and (b) wet people's appetites for fully functional SAS.

To further expand upon point (b), what if a student or a novice professional started playing around with a better, more functional version of SAS LE. When they get into a work environment and a set of problems arises, that person who was using a version 2.0 of this product could suggest to his/her boss that "Hey, SAS can handle this problem" instead of some other software package and/or programming in VBA, C++, Java, etc.

So my fervent and sincere hope is that the SAS Institute is listening - and judging by a couple of the posts, they seem to be - and come out with a new and improved version 2.0 of this product.

So, if the SAS Institute is listening to my measured, fair, and even toned review, then I hope that they will put out a version 2.0 of this product that:

(a) Is priced at an affordable level (please remember the days when you were a hungry student or a lower-level professional);

(b) Adds more functionality;

(c) Fixes the bugs;

(d) Has better documentation gratis; and

(e) Isn't over-bearing in promoting non-'traditional' SAS interfaces ... After all, this software is suppose to help people familiarize themselves with the full power of SAS and not simply a dumbed-down, wimpy point, click, fill-in-the-blank interface. If potential users really wanted the later, then they could simply use Excel (possibly with some add-ons and/or VBA code) instead of SAS.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars OK for learning basics, but not good for advanced study, July 13, 2003

By A Customer

This is a very nice software package to learn SAS basics. But it does not have lots of advanced procedures. For example, "PROC STATESPACE" and "PROC VARMAX" among others used for forecasting time series are missing in this learning edition. It is very disappointing somehow if you try to learn more and deeper after learning some basics. However, it is still worth having it......

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Yes, this is a great way to learn SAS, including programming, February 1, 2003

By A Customer

Do you want to learn SAS but don't know where to start?
This is a great way to learn about the power and functionality of Base SAS, regardless of whether you love or hate programming. It includes an easy-to-use, point-and-click Windows interface (Enterprise Guide) that generates SAS code for you behind the scenes. You can follow the simple exercises in the included book to read different sources of data, process that data in SAS, and produce HTML (web page) output, all without writing a line of code yourself.
For those who want to learn how to write SAS code, you can examine the code that gets generated by the point-and-click interface, modify that code if you wish, or write your own code from scratch. (The reader from Cincinnati who said, "you can't do actual programming in the software" is wrong.) For programmers who have used SAS before and prefer the Display Manager System interface, you can do that too...
At first, I thought the ...price tag was somewhat steep, but I was impressed once I saw the software (you'd have to pay thousands to license this same software from SAS). The Learning Edition does limit the amount of output you get to 1,000 rows, but this is more than enough to learn what SAS can do.
For beginners who want to continue expanding their SAS knowledge, I would recommend also getting "The Little SAS Book: A Primer, Second Edition". You can use the programming environment in SAS Learning Edition to do the exercises in that book.
I had never touched SAS software before, but heard about Learning Edition through word-of-mouth, then bought it and went through the included exercises. In December I interviewed for, and landed, a SAS job. While this obviously wasn't the only thing that got me the job, the hiring manager did say it made a difference that I had experience with SAS Learning Edition. I highly recommend this product.