New to SAS

[auroshika16]

Hello folks,

I am a complete newbie to SAS and i have started going through BASE SAS. I have good experience in R for data science and i would like to work with SAS in data science/analytics . I have loads of questions regarding what exactly do i learn, where to start, what are the differences between SAS EG, SAS data mining and other stuff related to data analytics, how is a sas programmer different from the one who does analytics or are they the same, and also, before i could post this question, a number of communities popped up and i was confused as to which community i target this question to.  Any help is greatly appreciated as i have absolutely no idea in which direction i have to proceed learning SAS. Thanks! 🙂

[ballardw]

My two cents on your questions

"what are the differences between SAS EG, SAS data mining and other stuff related to data analytics". EG is an environment for accessing various SAS tools and controlling/showing process flows. Most everything else are packages of the analytic procedures.

"how is a sas programmer different from the one who does analytics or are they the same": Depends on the shop and job. In my case it is both programmer and analyst (and designer and database manager and ...). In very large shops a programmer could be similar to any other application programmer putting code together to accomplish specified tasks. Analysis may be done through various interfaces custom or SAS supplied or by creating code and processes as needed for specific tasks.

I recommend that you look into the online help of BASE SAS as there are many examples available. One section should be labeled "learning to use SAS" or similar and would have example programs. If you are familiar with another programming language then often the fun part comes in learning the different syntax to do things you suspect are possible.

One thing to pay attention is display Formats. They are a very powerful tool for showing data as desired and creating categories for analysis based on values or ranges of values without haveing to create additional variables. Custom Formats allow some pretty neat stuff.

[Reeza]

There's a free e-course for R users learn SAS programming.

http://blogs.sas.com/content/sastraining/2016/09/26/free-training-course-sas-programming-for-r-users...

[Ksharp]

"what are the differences between SAS EG, SAS data mining and other stuff related to data analytics,"
SAS EG is more like IDE - a programming developed tool ,you can use it to write sas code and build model.

SAS DataMining is a tool of data analysis ,but it is all from Computer Science , like decision tree, network.
unlike statistical model SAS STAT, it has a disadvantage, which is highly depended on training data, once a little change on 
training data . You would get different predicted result.Which implying destroy the interpretation of model.


" how is a sas programmer different from the one who does analytics or are they the same"
sas programmer is just writing sas code (most are data step), you don't need any math or statistical background.
Just keep learning code skill ,and you will be a good coder and data cleaning expert.
If you want do some stuff like data analysis you need  math or statistical theory, that not so easy to learn.

"i have absolutely no idea in which direction i have to proceed learning SAS."
Suggest you start from learning sas coding(data step) , and after that (you have strong skill to process data) you can learn
SAS IML which is another language which can build yourself model - very easy to learn if you are familiar with R, both are very likely.
Finally you could learn some math and statistical model which is very difficult ,might cost your the whole entire life .
But that is most valuable .

[auroshika16]

Thank you so much for all of that information. I think i'll go ahead with Base SAS and advanced SAS for now and think about using statistics once i am done with the rest.

[Reeza]

There are video's and access to the two free e-learning courses here:

http://support.sas.com/training/tutorial/

Good Luck!

[abhaykumar]

Hi auroshika16,
First of all I would like to congratulate you showing enthusiasm for
exciting language and tool. You should start with Base SAS and you can join
SAS community and ask you doubts.
Thank you
Abhay

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