topic Re: My SAS Certification Log in SAS Certification

My SAS Certification Log

Nietzsche — Fri, 04 Nov 2022 12:07:27 GMT

Hello mods,

If you don't mind, can I create this thread to log down my certification journey, and have the rest of the SAS community advise on various study and preparation techniques for the SAS certifications.

My goal is to pass the Base exam this Nov/Dec and pass the SAS Advanced programming in the first half 2023.

Thank you

Re: My SAS Certification Log

Nietzsche — Mon, 24 Oct 2022 21:19:03 GMT

Just a quick overview of what I have done so far.

I first started learning SAS back in 03 Sep 2022, about 2 months ago,

From 03 Sep to 14 Oct, I read chapter 1 to 6 from SAS Essentials by Elliot , I spent 22.9 hours, which averages to about only 0.55 hours day.

It is a very good book but I have been consistent due to adapting to my new job and just being undisciplined in applying myself. I will come back to this book later.

From 15 Oct to 20 Oct, I decided to switch take the free SAS courses as it is highly recommended, I finished the SAS Programming 1 course in 13.6 hours, that is an average of 2.27 hours a day.

From the 20 Oct to now, I am currently doing the Programming 2 course, so far I am in Lesson 4 and I expect to finish this course by end of this week.

My plan is to go back to the SAS Essentials by Elliot book and then Base exam prep guide, then go for the Base Exam in November.

Re: My SAS Certification Log

MarkusWeick — Tue, 25 Oct 2022 04:17:46 GMT

Hi @Nietzsche,

what levels of the practises do you do?

Best,

Markus

Re: My SAS Certification Log

Nietzsche — Tue, 25 Oct 2022 04:37:28 GMT

I do the first two, the skip the challenge ones for programming 2.

Re: My SAS Certification Log

MarkusWeick — Tue, 25 Oct 2022 05:01:54 GMT

I foubd it helpful for the exam, that I had done all levels.

Re: My SAS Certification Log

Nietzsche — Tue, 25 Oct 2022 07:52:58 GMT

To be honest, I don't know SAS expect you to complete the challenges coding with like a 3 minutes ish explanation video. I usually just go straight to the solution and practice with the solution code or skip challenges.

Re: My SAS Certification Log

MarkusWeick — Tue, 25 Oct 2022 08:47:27 GMT

It was just my personal impression. All knowledge you need for the challenges is provided in the course earlier. The additional thinking and transfer is a good preparation for the exam.

Re: My SAS Certification Log

Nietzsche — Tue, 25 Oct 2022 09:28:39 GMT

Programming 1 and 2 is just like your typical Coursera courses. Any average book would be superior to these courses in every single way. I am only doing it to see what the fuss is all about like like Google DA certificate, not very impressed so far. Looking forward to the official SAS base exam prep guide tho.

Re: My SAS Certification Log

MarkusWeick — Tue, 25 Oct 2022 09:39:59 GMT

with nearly 30 years of trainer experience (many more years with learners experience) and an M.A. in Adult Learning in the back two comments:

- there are many learner types, some are best suited with a book

- the two base programming courses are excellent e-learnings, which should suit many people.

Best,

Markus

Re: My SAS Certification Log

MarkusWeick — Tue, 25 Oct 2022 10:14:39 GMT

As exam preparation I also recommend EXAM CONTENT GUIDE, Sample Questions and Practice Exam, which you all could find here: Base Programming Specialist | SAS

Re: My SAS Certification Log

Mark2010 — Tue, 25 Oct 2022 12:44:47 GMT

Plus I'll add:

Review the recently released Programming Tip Sheet:
Watch this recorded webinar about the A00-231 exam featuring 2 top-notch SAS instructors
Review our Tips & Strategies article.
Take the free full length practice exam. This should be your last step after all other preparations are done. Don't make the mistake others have and work backwards from the solutions, actually work through each problem until you get the right answers.

Re: My SAS Certification Log

MarkusWeick — Tue, 25 Oct 2022 12:50:29 GMT

And after the practise exam go through the exam content guide again(!), reflect it with your experience from the practise exam and fill your newly discovered gaps . 🙂

Re: My SAS Certification Log

Nietzsche — Sat, 29 Oct 2022 20:56:21 GMT

week 43 update.

Finished Programming 2 yesterday (29th OCT) took me 17.9 hours. One of the worst experience I had to endure in my life. I can believe SAS Institute thinks it is worth charging $1200 AUD for. In fact I wouldn't even recommend it even if SAS institute pay you to study it, there are much better options IMO.

Just give you a simple example from lesson 7 because the memory is still fresh..

In lesson 7 part 2 on Transpose Procedure, the in part where the course suppose to "teach" you how to turn a wide table to a narrow table, is this how it is taught..

you get a 27 second video with only a diagram like this, and THAT IS LITERALLY IT... with no explanation on the code or syntax or anything.. and then it gets better..

right after the 27 video, you get throw into this shamble SAS institute calls "activity".

So you read the following instruction, then you have to into your SAS studio, find the corresponding sas file, open it, put the var statement, then run it and see the result and figure out how the syntax and the results fit together.

And that's it, that is all the "teaching" you gonna get on proc transpose wide to narrow, then do some difficult practice questions, it's like watch someone hammer a nail then get asked to build a hut with instructions at different places.

And when you do the quiz, you don't have a single page for easy reference where you can see the explanation with code and output/result, you'll have to go into the course, find the activity because the video is useless, find the activity number, then go back your SAS studio, copy the code from the activty insturtion to see the result and all without explanation on any of the syntax/code structure.

yeah sorry for the rant, the 18 hours could be much better invested on better materials.

Re: My SAS Certification Log

fja — Sun, 30 Oct 2022 12:54:49 GMT

@Nietzsche wrote:
Finished Programming 2 yesterday (29th OCT) took me 17.9 hours. One of the worst experience I had to endure in my life. I can believe SAS Institute thinks it is worth charging $1200 AUD for. In fact I wouldn't even recommend it even if SAS institute pay you to study it, there are much better options IMO.

Hello @Nietzsche !

I am sorry to learn that you are disapointed with the course. IMHO it is helpful, but maybe you are better off with a book - like @MarkusWeick has already pointed out.

I personally used The Little SAS Book for preparation. It is not sufficient for the Advanced Programming Ceritficate, though. Nevertheless I found it easy to fill the gap by using the standard documentation on sas.com.

Just my 2cts

Kind regards

fja

PS: Just a quick question: Is the Programming 2 course free at the moment or have you enrolled for it, i.e. spent the $1,2k?

Re: My SAS Certification Log

Reeza — Mon, 31 Oct 2022 17:53:55 GMT

According to the screenshots included, the video should be 27 minutes not 27 seconds, is it possible that video was corrupted?

In lesson 7 part 2 on Transpose Procedure, the in part where the course suppose to "teach" you how to turn a wide table to a narrow table, is this how it is taught..

you get a 27 second video with only a diagram like this, and THAT IS LITERALLY IT... with no explanation on the code or syntax or anything.. and then it gets better..

Re: My SAS Certification Log

MarkusWeick — Mon, 31 Oct 2022 18:20:46 GMT

Hi @Reeza,

I just watched the video. It is supposed to be 27 seconds long. But it is also part of a sequence of 8 learning bits on PROC Transpose.

Re: My SAS Certification Log

StaceySyphus — Mon, 31 Oct 2022 21:03:27 GMT

I am the author of this course and would like to share a few thoughts and suggestions. First, I am sorry the format of this course did not fit with your particular learning style. As mentioned by another contributor, different learners certainly have preferences with how they best acquire knowledge, and although we strive to provide effective instruction for all, that is an impossible goal. Fortunately we do have other learning options, including some of the books and other resources that have been recommended. I hope those materials work better for your learning style.

In general, I will say that this course is very highly rated. Here are the overall reviews from one platform:

I’d like to take a moment to explain the methodology we follow in our training. In our courses, we want to maximize the time spent learning through actual, hands-on-keyboard experience. Videos are intended to introduce concepts and syntax, but we want learners to work directly with real code and data to discover what the various SAS programming statements and options actually do. After all, the ultimate goal our courses is not only to pass the certification exams, but to produce capable SAS programmers that are comfortable writing code, modifying it, making mistakes, and fixing them. The certification exam is a means to validate that ability. Activities are interspersed throughout the training to provide short (3-5 minutes) hands-on opportunities to write/modify code to discover a concept or validate understanding. The multi-level practices are longer (~10 minutes each) and allow you to apply the concepts in real-world scenarios. Level 1 practices are fairly basic and provide a lot of guidance. Level 2 practices provide less guidance and highlight some of the more advanced features presented. Challenge practices are intended to go beyond what was taught in the section by either integrating other concepts taught in previous sections or directing you to SAS Help and documentation to learn more. We simply can’t teach everything there is to know about SAS syntax in a course, so we want you to learn the basics AND know where to go to learn more. The challenge practices simulate the experience of writing SAS code in a work environment - you start with your existing knowledge to build programs, but then rely on SAS documentation and other helpful resources to accomplish your task. Complete, integrated solutions are provided for all activities and practices for learners that would like help along the way.

I would also like to explain the thinking behind the content included in the PROC TRANSPOSE section as an example. The section begins with a short video to show the basic syntax. This is followed by a guided activity where the learner examines the initial data, then sequentially adds various statements and options to PROC TRANSPOSE (one at a time) to examine the impact each has on the resulting table. Then there is another short video to explain the next step in the progression of the syntax (the BY statement) followed by a 4-minute demo that is a comprehensive example of the syntax taught up to that point. Subsequent concept videos in the section are followed by additional activities, demonstrations, or practices. If a learner watches all videos and completes the hands-on activities and practices, this section would take approximately 35-45 minutes. Does this section cover ALL that is possible with PROC TRANSPOSE? Definitely not – we could write an entire course on the topic. However, the intent is to introduce the procedure and its core capabilities. And the certification exam would only test these core capabilities.

Re: My SAS Certification Log

Reeza — Mon, 31 Oct 2022 21:17:04 GMT

Thanks for the double check 🙂

Re: My SAS Certification Log

ballardw — Mon, 31 Oct 2022 21:23:54 GMT

@StaceySyphus wrote:
(In part)

Does this section cover ALL that is possible with PROC TRANSPOSE? Definitely not – we could write an entire course on the topic. However, the intent is to introduce the procedure and its core capabilities. And the certification exam would only test these core capabilities.

Having used, abused and misused, Proc Transpose for nearly 30 years I agree with @StaceySyphus that 45 minutes is not going to cover all possibilities.

Be glad that memory is so cheap and plentiful these days. I used to get lazy and have Proc transpose run out of resources requiring a lot of time while thrashing the disk with temporary read/write operations though I am sure someone has tried to transpose larger sets than I use these days and have similar issues.

Re: My SAS Certification Log

Nietzsche — Thu, 03 Nov 2022 23:19:27 GMT

I just came back to my log, since when did I accept stacey's response as my solution? Can other people designate solution on OP's behalf? Sorry I am new to the community so I am not sure how the voting/solution system work.

There shouldn't be a solution, this is a personal log, not a question/answer thread.