Questions about Webinar Logistics
Q: How can I access the March 13th presentation material as well as the three previous webinars?
A: You can get access the material from today as well as the previous webinars by going to: communities.sas.com > Find a Community > Learn SAS > SAS Certification. Here’s the direct link: https://communities.sas.com/t5/SAS-Certification/bd-p/certification.
Questions about the SAS Certification Program and General BASE Exam Questions
Q: How often can one take the test? What is the procedure?
A: You can sign up for the exam at the following website: http://www.pearsonvue.com/sas/ Per the policy, "Candidates may attempt each certification exam up to five time in a 12-month period, waiting a minimum of 14 days between attempts. Exam charges are incurred for each exam attempt. Exams that do not comply with this retake policy will be considered invalid and will not be eligible for a refund and/or a certification credential. Once a passing score is achieved on a specific exam, no further attempts are allowed on that exam.” You can find more certification general FAQ at: https://www.sas.com/en_us/certification/faq.html
Q: How many months of hands on SAS experience will be helpful to pass the exam to get certification?
A: In general, six months to a year of experience using the content area material is recommended.
Q: Will we be able to go back and change our answer to a previously answered question?
A: You can mark items to go back and review and then you can change your answer.
Q: Where can I find more exercises with answers and explanations?
A: From the SAS Certification web site, navigate to the Base Programmer page. Under “Exam Preparation”, you will find sample test questions, links to practice exams and other resources such as SAS Certification Prep Guides and other SAS Books, documentation and white papers. You can check out SAS books by visiting the SAS Bookstore at www.sas.com/store/books. The cost of the SAS Certification Prep guide: Base Programming for SAS 9 is $140.00 USD.
Q: Can you get feedback when you fail the exam?
A: You do receive a score report once you have completed and submitted your exam. You can print a copy of the score report by going back into your Pearson VUE account and looking at your exam history and from there you can print your score report. The score report will indicate how you have done on each section of the exam but it does not indicate which questions you answered incorrectly.
Q: What is the cost for taking the exam each time?
A: Within North America and India, the current fee associated with each exam attempt is US$180, except for the predictive modeling exam. The Predictive Modeling Using SAS Enterprise Miner exam fee is US$250 and is only offered through SAS. In some countries, different pricing and additional taxes may apply. Please visit www.pearsonvue.com/sas for exam pricing in your country. SAS Global Certification exam prices are subject to change.
Q: What score is needed to pass the exam? How many questions are there? Are all the questions in multiple choice format with four choices?
A: In short, you need to score of 70% correct to pass. There are 60-65 questions on the exam. The majority of the questions are multiple choice with four choices, however, there are some short answer/fill in the blank questions. All of this information can be found at our certification web site on the Base Programmer web page: https://www.sas.com/en_us/certification/credentials/foundation-tools/base-programmer.html
Questions about the Generating Reports and Test Taking Strategies Content Area
Q: Is PROC REPORT and TABULATE covered on the exam? What about graphing PROCs?
A: PROC REPORT, PROC TABULATE and also there are some graphing procedures all are part of BASE SAS, so technically they could be on the exam. Honestly though, I would not worry too much about them. Definitely focus on PROC PRINT, PROC FREQ, PROC MEANS, and PROC UNIVARIATE. Those are definitely the core procedures from a reporting standpoint that you are going to definitely see on the BASE exam.
Q: Do I need to know the PICTURE statement for PROC FORMAT?
A: We did a review on PROC FORMAT and in our case the main statement I was showing you with PROC FORMAT was the VALUE statement. With the VALUE statement you are creating a format. There are other statements you can use in PROC FORMAT like IN VALUE will create an informat. The picture statement will create a format for a numeric variable like a template. For example it will say put a dash between certain numbers. I would not worry about those statements. Focus on the VALUE statement and not on statements like IN VALUE and PICTURE. So definitely focus on the syntax that was on the slide I showed you for PROC FORMAT.
Q: I thought you could put multiple WHERE statements in a PROC. Am I wrong?
A: You are right, however they are just not plain, old WHERE statements. The question we looked at was a WHERE statement where the gender value was ‘M’ and the age value, so they were two separate WHERE statements. You can have multiple conditions. Most people would have had that example where the gender equals M and the sex value equals. There are ways that you can have multiple WHERE statements but as I mentioned, that second WHERE statement would have to be a WHERE ALSO statement. So you can have a WHERE ALSO or another way you can do it is WHERE SAME AND. If you are not familiar with this, definitely go and look at the documentation for the WHERE statement and in addition to the WHERE there is a WHERE ALSO and a WHERE SAME AND. So if you want multiple WHEREs that’s the way to do it by having that extra added syntax.
Q: How much should users focus on PROC SUMMARY for exam preparation?
A: PROC MEANS and PROC SUMMARY can give you the same results. Since we teach PROC MEANS in our classes, questions will focus on PROC MEANS and not PROC SUMMARY.
Q: Is PROC REPORT part of Base SAS?
A: Yes, PROC REPORT is part of Base SAS.
Q: Can the WHERE statement be used only in the print procedure and the set statement?
A: You can use the WHERE statement in most SAS procedures to subset/filter the data. You can also use the where statement in a Data step depending on the data existing in the SAS data set that is on the SET statement. There is also a WHERE= data set option.
