The book uses < > to indicate optional argument.       ... View more

Well, it is in the Base exam prep guide, the YRDIF is useful, but I fail to see the purpose of learning this function for the base exam. ... View more

page. 276   Extra right parenthesis? ... View more

I found your thread from google and I believe it is the only INTCK vs. YRDIF thread and I am having the same issue while reading the base exam prep guide.   INTCK counts +1 every time it encounters 1 Jan.  YRDIF counts +1 for every 365 (or 360 or 366 days depending on the optional third argument you use, I don't know how the 30/360 work tho)   ... View more

() are round brackets, [] are square brackets, and {} curly brackets (https://www.englishclub.com/writing/punctuation-brackets.htm). okay, in other programming communities, like python, they call () strictly parenthesis and [] brackets to avoid confusion when making list and tuples.   ... View more

pg 266. both code works but just inconsistent for no good reason.  The whole section talks about IF statement, then they use WHERE statement ?       ... View more

Happy week 50.   week 49 update. Total sas study is 18.1 hours. Total Anki notes is 68, still need to creates notes for chapter 13, 14 and 16 of the base exam prep guide. Looking forward to the base exam this coming Thursday. ... View more

You are confusing DATASET OPTIONS  - brackets required - and PROCEDURE OPTIONS - no brackets required. See the documentation link in my earlier response. I really have no idea that you're talking about. if you could come up with examples using the sashelp.cars so I can understand what you're trying to convey.   And () are called parenthesis, [] are brackets, do you mean () outside the drop option? ... View more

The PROC MEANS statement has its own options. They don't require brackets and can be specified in any order after PROC MEANS. yeah they do require parentheses, otherwise SAS will give an error, and I just given an example that shows order DOES matter.     ... View more

Does that mean the book got the order of the syntax wrong?  it looks like it that way from the documentation on PROC MEANS   ... View more

  data work.earnings; Amount=1000; Rate=0.75/12; do month=1 to 12; Earned+(amount+earned)*rate; end; run; if I find the above SUM statement too complicated, do you think this is an acceptabe/good substitute by breaking down the sum statement and add an extra variable?   data work.earnings; principal=1000; Rate=0.75/12; do month=1 to 12; retain earned 0; total_amount=principal+earned; earned=earned+(total_amount)*rate; output; end; run; proc print data=earnings; var principal rate month total_amount earned; run; I just find my version is easier to understand.   ... View more