New to SAS software? These sessions are for you

[BeverlyBrown]

Are you learning SAS at school? Or did you show up for work one day and find out you'd be creating reports with this thing called SAS? Maybe you're familiar with some flavors of SAS but prepping your palate to learn another.

Whatever your newbie circumstance, SAS Global Forum probably has something for you.

Below, for your convenience, is a sample of sessions you may find helpful (in alphabetical order by title). Yes, there's plenty more. I picked topics that seem geared to the newest of the newbs in a particular area. Instructions to slice and dice the session catalog follows the list.

Presenters: If you want to plug your session, tell us about it in the comments.

Enjoy the conference. Wish I was going!

A Beginner's Guide to ARRAYs and DO Loops

If you are copying and pasting code over and over to perform the same operation on multiple variables in a SAS® DATA step, you need to learn about arrays and DO loops for greater efficiency.

An Introduction to the Process of Improving a Neural Network

Learn a template for building a high-performing deep neural network in SAS. You'll learn about several nodes in SAS Enterprise Miner.

Augmented Reality Predictive Maintenance System with AI for Industrial Mobile Robots

Learn how AI predicts machine breakdowns using advanced data-analysis techniques to enhance maintenance efforts through augmented reality (AR).

Be Prepared: An Introduction to SAS® Data Preparation

Learn how the profiling and data cleansing features of SAS Data Preparation. Even a non-technical person can use the point-and-click interface to prepare data.

Boop-Oop-A-Doop! It's Showtime with SAS® on Apache Hadoop!

Learn to use Hadoop tools for SAS®9 and SAS® Viya®, the main Hadoop landscapes, and good practices to access and turn your Hadoop data into top-notch information.

Bring Analytics into Your Day Job

Learn to bring analytics and analytical thinking into your decision-making by using SAS® Visual Analytics. We explore everything from smart, automated tools that can help you find insights within your data to simple charts and rules that can help you determine the usefulness of your insights.

Creating and Controlling JSON Output with the JSON Procedure

Learn how the JSON procedure allows you to export SAS data sets in JSON, as well as create custom JSON output.

Creating Lists! Using the Powerful INTO Clause with PROC SQL to Store Information in Macro Lists

Learn to avoid the tedious, error-prone business of typing long lists of values by using the INTO clause with the SQL procedure. By assigning a single value or multiple values to a macro variable, you'll save time and reduce errors.

Getting Started with Bayesian Analysis and the MCMC Procedure

Learn the difference between Bayesian and classical inference and how to use the MCMC procedure to fit Bayesian statistical models.

Getting Started with Penalized Regression and the GLMSELECT Procedure

Learn the advantages of different penalized regression methods and how to use the GLMSELECT procedure for a more parsimonious and predictive model.

Getting Started with SAS® Support Resources

Learn about SAS support and learning resources. While geared toward users who have less than two years of experience with SAS, this session is appropriate for anyone who would like to increase their knowledge.

Hand-on workshops at SAS Global Forum:

• SAS® Macro Programming Essentials for New Users
• Data Quality Programming Challenge
• End-to-End Modeling and Machine Learning in SAS® Viya®
• Getting Started with SAS® Programming in SAS® Viya®
• Getting the Most out of SAS® Macro Language and SQL
• How Simple Improvements Can Drive Seismic Shifts with SAS® Customer Intelligence 360
• SAS® Visual Statistics in SAS® Viya®

How to be an Effective Statistician

Learn how leadership behaviors, innovation, knowledge of business and data, and efficiency lead to doing the right things the right way at the right time.

Increase your Productivity with SAS® Enterprise Guide®

Learn about SAS Enterprise Guide's data exploration tools, workspace layout, and enhanced programming environment. You will also learn how to easily create reports and graphics and produce the output formats that you need (XLS, PDF, RTF, HTML, and PPT).

Maxims of Maximally Efficient SAS® Programmers

Learn from frequent SAS Support Communities contributor @Kurt_Bremser useful hints and philosophies for starting out well as a SAS® programmer and improve, whether you're a beginner or seasoned pro.

Standardizing Text in Your Data

Learn through examples of several functions to efficiently standardize the text variable before you use the data to do the next-step analysis.

SWAT's it all about? SAS® Viya® for Python Users

Learn how Python integrates with SAS® Viya®. Specifically: You'll see how to use Python SWAT to first connect to a CAS session, load data from Python into CAS, and use CAS action sets to analyze it.  Then you'll learn how to make the data available to other applications, such as SAS® Visual Analytics.

The Why and How of Teaching SAS® to High School Students

Learn – from a graduate student at Florida A&M University – why and how to go about educating the next generation about SAS software.

For more information

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[GinaRepole]

Okay, no shame, I'll break the ice and plug my workshop 🙂

Feel free to stop by, say hello, and write some SAS code in the Hands-On-Workshop: SAS Data Quality Programming Challenge. While 60% of a data scientists time is estimated to be spent on cleaning and ensuring the quality of data, that means nearly half is still spent on various other related topics. Regardless of your skill level, this workshop has a track for you. There's segments for the advanced programmer, the data quality purist, the beginner who can't tell data step from two step, and an "anything goes" section for visualization and exploratory analysis. Or for the more hard-core of you challenge-takers, you can run all four challenges in order to go from a mess of raw data to visualizations or analysis of your clean handiwork.

The workshop only lasts an hour so if you can't get enough SAS programming practice in, or want to try that full run-through, we'll be sharing the full workshop to the Communities to access later on. Hope to see some of you there!

[BeverlyBrown]

"...who can't tell a data step from a two step..." Epic! Sounds like a great session, @GinaRepole!