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SAS for Dummies

Whether you are a grad student, business analyst, statistician, or even a long time user of SAS software- SAS for Dummies (available at Amazon) offers quick access to a vast survey of practical knowledge using the new and exciting world of SAS 9. If you are using the latest version of SAS Learning Edition (version 4.1), this book also makes a perfect companion since it covers SAS Enterprise Guide and the same release of SAS 9.

Like many Dummies books, it is an introduction that will get you moving forward and make you productive in short order. SAS products covered include SAS 9, SAS Enterprise Guide 4.1, SAS Add-In for Microsoft Office 2.1, SAS Web Report Studio 3.1, data warehousing with SAS, statistical analysis with SAS, forecasting with SAS, and data mining with SAS. After using this book, you may be inspired to read further on areas of greater importance to you (see my Other Books page for great reviews and recommendations.)

SAS for Dummies is very different from most SAS books since it does not focus on just one topic, such as data management, survival analysis, or SAS programming. Instead, I offer you key points and capabilities for a broad range of areas needed to access your data, manage your data, create reports and summaries, make awesome graphs, and get you started on the path of analytics guru!

Adobe Acrobat PDF excerpts of the book are available here (note that they each open in a new browser window):

SAS for Dummies Table of Contents

SAS for Dummies Sample Chapter

SAS for Dummies Index

SAS for Dummies Sample Datasets, also included with SAS Enterprise Guide. I have them available here in case you can’t locate or simply don’t have these sample datasets. You will need to place them in a folder and SAS library accessible to your SAS server or in a folder where you can import them to your SAS Server with Enterprise Guide.

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Make my day… obtain insights with SAS graphs in minutes!

To all you long-time users of SAS out there, why are you continuing to write the arcane code required to make graphs with SAS programming?  I remember the pain of scanning the nearly 1,000 pages of GRAPH manuals to locate just the right options to tweak my graphs for business presentations.  Many days, I wanted to ditch it all and just fall back to Harvard Graphics for all of my graphs (yes, this was quite some time ago!)  Consider using SAS Enterprise Guide and save yourself many sleepless nights and get the easy ability to export to Office seamlessly.

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EG- the new home for long-time SAS users

A recent post on SAS-L asks about using EG in a group that has used SAS for quite some time.  Here are my thoughts, if you have others feel free to post them as comments!

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The Joy of SAS Enterprise Guide

SAS Enterprise Guide is hard to describe, difficult to pigeonhole, a very powerful tool that is the “Excel” of SAS, and the closest thing there is to an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for SAS.  Since the release of SAS 9, Enterprise Guide is the new face of SAS for general purpose use in a variety of situations.  Enterprise Guide is now included with desktop SAS for Windows, sold with almost every BI Server sale, bundled with many of the SAS Solutions, and loved by users at many companies I have visited.  It does have shortcomings, but it is capable of a breadth of work that no other tool is capable of performing (at least that I have ever seen!)  Simply stated, it leverages many of the old and new strengths of SAS in an easy to use desktop application.

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SAS Continues Strong BI Market Growth

SAS is the 2nd largest BI vendor in the world, just behind Business Objects, according to this report posted at http://www.sas.com/news/analysts/idc_bi_0607.pdf

It’s interesting to note that Business Objects growth rate slowed by half this past year (down from 14% to 7% growth/year.) SAS’s rate accelerated (up from 13 to 17%) and Microsoft (up from 25 to 28%) are the few large vendors seeing acceleration in growth rates. It’s possible SAS could take the number one spot in the next year or two

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Can LE 2.0 or EG 2.1 be used with SAS for Dummies?

Question: from a reader in Sweden

 

Just saw on Amazon that this new book is available. I know the examples in it are from using Enterprise Guide 4.1, but I have the Learning edition 2.0 which includes Enterprise Guide 2.1. Can I still use the book, or are these versions of Enterprise Guide very different?
 

Answer: from Stephen

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SAS for Dummies a new textbook at Duke Med School

SAS for Dummies is being used at Duke University Medical School as one of two texts for a course on Introduction to Statistical Methods.  See http://crtp.mc.duke.edu/content.asp?page=courseinfo.  The program the book is being used in is described as:

“… provides academic training in the quantitative and methodological principles of clinical research. Designed primarily for clinical fellows who are training for academic careers, the program offers formal courses in research design, research management, medical genomics, and statistical analysis.”

I have to say this is somewhat of a surprise at first

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The Little SAS Book: A Primer

This book is a well written and succinct introduction to SAS programming and basic statistical analysis.  Using just PC SAS with BASE and STAT, you can pick up the basics of programming with SAS for data access, data manipulation with the DATA step and functions, basic SAS PROCs, controlling output appearance, leveraging MACRO capabilities of SAS, basic statistical analysis, and program debugging.  With SAS Learning Edition and this book you can quickly master the basics of the SAS language.

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