Maths connection to SAS

[malcolmM78]

Hi Everyone, 

Math is not a major in all of my studies, and I have not been great at math. I am interested in learning SAS and intend to do the basic certification. Does learning SAS involve any math calculation or anything to do with math at all? As silly as this sounds, but I am just wondring...any of your valuable inputs and advise would be much appreciated. 

Thank you !

Regards

Malcolm 

[Shmuel]

Learning SAS menas, first of all, learning programming language.

SAS programming means, mainly, data processing, data analysis and reporting.

To program you need understand basic computer structure.

Math is the core of understanding the infrastructure of computers and of 

computer language developing.

For programming you need just elemantary math.

[malcolmM78]

Thank you Shmuel !! That's encouraging 🙂

[Ksharp]

If it is only SAS programming, that is OK, no need any Math. But If it is IML programming, you need a strong Math background .

[malcolmM78]

Thank you Ksharp ! Highly appreciate your input. What is IML programming? Is it a part of SAS?

[Ksharp]

IML is another kind of sas language.
If you want develop a new statistical method, you gonna need it.

[Reeza]

One of benefits of learning as an adult is the topics are much more practical and applied. It makes the learning easier. Also, because you were bad at something in the past doesn't mean you will be in the future. 

Programming is logic. If you want to program well: learn logic. Practice pseudo coding problems. Sometimes SAS is easier to learn just because it doesn't follow the math/matrix notation. 

[malcolmM78]

Thank you Reeza for those encouraging positive words ! Helps me to look further into SAS. I am working in healthcare and I would liek to establish a career in SAS with healthcare ! Greatly appreciate your inputs !

[ballardw · Accepted solution]

A common type of issue that comes up in programming is something like this:

I have a variable in a text file that occupies 23 character spaces and starts in column 15. What column does the variable end at?

If you find that question difficult to deal with you may have issues.

And the answer is 37.

[malcolmM78]

That was very practical ballardw !! Thank you !! I  sure hope I can learn SAS given this example 🙂

Thank you !!

[Doc_Duke]

Malcolm,

As others have mentioned, you don't need much, if any, formal math training to use SAS as a programmer.  Logic and organizational skills are much more valuable.

However, to use and understand many of the SAS/Stat procedures, additional mathematics and statistics training are required.  Usually, second semester calculus is a sufficient mathematics foundation.  Some of the more complex procedure can require PhD level statistics training to fully exploit.

Doc Muhlbaier

[malcolmM78]

Thank you Doc !! I believe I have strong logic and organizational skill 🙂 Learning something new is always exciting, but also takes some research and clear vision. I believe this community has definitely supported me !!

Thank you again !