Opportunity for Improvement: SAS® Programming 2: Data Manipulation Techniques Lesson 2: Challenge

[coder1234]

Opportunity for Improvement:

1) Add Proc Sort instructions as part of the instructions.  Just to keep in consistency with the previous Practices/Assignment/Challenges OR  add "When sorting the data, keep only the Region, ParkName, State, and GrossAcres columns." higher up on the list of instructions, instead of after "Write a DATA step..."

2) 

Include as an alternative solution for Question 2.

Spoiler

proc freq data=singlestate;
run;

Include as an alternative solution for Question 3. 

Spoiler

proc print data=multistate;
Where upcase(ParkName)= 'HOVENWEEP NM';
run;

[SASJedi]

Thanks for taking the time to suggest improvements to the final Challenge problem in Lesson 2 of the SAS® Programming 2 course!

Question 2 reads: "How many rows are in the singlestate table?"
I personally feel that adding a PROC FREQ step to the solutions to question 2 is inefficient. The PROC FREQ output itself doesn't provide an easy answer to the question, and if you're using the row count reported in the log for PROC FREQ, it's the same as that reported in the log after the DATA step finished processing - so it's just as easy, and more efficient, to grab it from the DATA step log.

Question 3 reads: "In the multistate table, in which two states does the Hovenweep NM value appear for ParkName?"

And I really like your suggested addition for the question #3 solution. Using PROC PRINT with a WHERE clause is a nice programmatic approach and avoids having to page through the data in the viewer while searching visually for the answer. 

Have fun with the rest of the course!
Mark