topic Re: SAS Base Certification in SAS Programming

SAS Base Certification

Phil11 — Tue, 24 Apr 2018 03:39:44 GMT

Please, can anyone tell me how to improve on my weak areas?

I took the Base Certification exam and i did not pass. My weak areas were:

Creating Data Structures 38%
Generating Reports 45%
Handling Errors 29%

Please, what can i do to improve these areas?

Thank you so much.

Re: SAS Base Certification

AndrewHowell — Tue, 24 Apr 2018 04:12:53 GMT

The main question: how to measure when you are ready to resit the certification exam.

But what to measure against..?

Choice #1: Obtain the Base/SAS Certification guide and learn it.

Choice #2:

Go to the certification website:
https://www.sas.com/en_us/certification/credentials/foundation-tools/base-programmer.html
Under "Training & Exam prep" there are two courses recommended: Programming 1 & Programming 2
Check out the course syllabus for each - you can either attend these courses, or use the syllabus of each as your "shopping list" of topics you need to study & learn to pass Certification next time around.

Hope this helps.

Best of luck next time!

Re: SAS Base Certification

Kurt_Bremser — Tue, 24 Apr 2018 08:11:03 GMT

Does it only give you percentages, or do you get a list of failed questions?

If the latter, look where your answers differ from the correct ones, and then determine the mistake you made.

Run code repeatedly until you get it right.

If really puzzled, come back here with question, expected correct answer, and your code/answer.

Learning by doing has always worked for me.

Re: SAS Base Certification

ballardw — Tue, 24 Apr 2018 17:21:01 GMT

Practice.

More practice.

Look through questions here in base programming section that look like the topics relate to your weak areas.

See if you can find a solution before reading other responses.

Look at the types of questions we ask the posters to clarify the question(s) posed. See if you can figure out why ask them.

try to generate data sets as described by the poster using a data step. (A few rounds of this you'll see why we repeatedly ask posters to do that first) Test code against that data.

Don't get involved with the macro discussions until comfortable with base SAS programming.