SAS Programming 1: Lesson 3 Level 2: Using Procedures to Validate Data

[psmith18]

Hi...In SAS Programming 1: Lesson 3 Level 2: Using Procedures to Validate Data practice question # 3 asks "What invalid values exists for Type?" The solutions shows the answer of "NPRE, PRESERVE, and RIVERWAYS are invalid values for Type." Why are these invalid? What makes them invalid?

Thanks.

[qoit]

Need a bit more context than that, what procedure are you referring to? Even better if you could paste the question, along with all the necessary details such as the lesson name, level, procedure name, and anything else that can help one of the member to assist you in the best possible way 🙂

[Cynthia_sas]

Hi:
In the "real world" there's always a list of valid values for data and anything that does NOT fall into the valid category needs to be excluded from analysis (or fixed before you do your analysis or report). At the TOP of that practice, we provided students with a list that told them what the valid values were supposed to be. Our intent was for you to compare your output in the Results window to the list of valid values at the top of the question for REG and TYPE.
We hoped to instill in students the habit of checking their output and to some extent showing them a "best practice": just because the log doesn't have errors, you still need to validate the data using the business rules or data rules that the data needs to follow.
Cynthia