[Q] How did you learn the programming skills (like SAS, SQL, R) to be successful in your field?

[JafferStroks]

Some context: I am currently a first year math student, interested in becoming a statistician. I keep seeing references to SAS, SQL, R, and other similar tools, but my program offers only basic computer science classes and I wouldn’t be able to take more than one or two of them. Can I expect to learn more about programming in a statistics graduate program? Or is a solid foundation in computer science necessary for such a program? Most importantly, do employers expect fresh graduates to have skills in SAS or SQL? Any advice would be greatly appreciated, thanks in advance!

[Ksharp]

If you want stay in Pharmacy field , learn sas.

[PaigeMiller]

My department (at a bank) just hired two students right out of college who did not know SAS. Over the years, they have hired many people who did not know SAS. They are expected to learn SAS on the job, and training and mentorship is provided. The bank was looking for quantitative skills, which the students certainly had, based on their college degree and resumé.

Maybe other banks are different.

[sbxkoenk]

Hello,

It's much easier to learn SAS on-the-job than it is to learn statistics on-the-job (the latter is nearly impossible).

And if your program offers some computer programming courses, you will also benefit from these when learning SAS (even when the original coding language was another one).

When you make your master thesis I suppose you are free to choose the software you do your thesis with. You can choose SAS to prepare for the "market place".

Good luck,

Koen

[SuCheeTay]

Great questions! You will definitely have opportunities during your graduate program in Statistics to learn SAS and perhaps other analytics programming languages. Meanwhile, there are a number of learning opportunities for free. Look into SAS Programmers Week coming up in September as well as SAS Academic Programs where SAS partners with college professors to help their students learn SAS.

[Ron_Cody]

Hi.  I am assuming you have access to SAS.  If not, I strongly recommend SAS OnDemand for Academics.  It is a free cloud based platform for people wanting to learn SAS.  You don't have to download any software and the interface is called SAS Studio.  Please check out my SAS author web site to see my SAS books.  In particular, check out Learning SAS by Example, 2nd edition or a more recent book, Getting Started with SAS Programming Using SAS Studio in the Cloud.  You can access my author web site at support.sas.com/Cody.  Also feel free to email me at Ron.Cody@gmail.com

[Panagiotis]

SAS offers the following free resources to get started:

SAS On Demand for Academics - Free cloud version of SAS. No installation required.

Free courses:

- SAS Programming 1: Introduction to SAS programming course. Teaches how to access, explore, prepare, summarize and export data.

- Statistics 1: Introduction to ANOVA, Regression, and Logistic Regression: The focus is on t tests, ANOVA, and linear regression, and includes a brief introduction to logistic regression. 

Hope this helps!

- Peter