SAS for Dummies

by Chris Hemedinger and Stephen McDaniel

Book Overview

The fun and easy way to learn to use this leading business intelligence tool

Written by an author team who is directly involved with SAS, this easy-to-follow guide is fully updated for the latest release of SAS and covers just what you need to put this popular software to work in your business. SAS allows any business or enterprise to improve data delivery, analysis, reporting, movement across a company, data mining, forecasting, statistical...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0470539682
• ISBN13: 9780470539682
• Release Date: April 2010
• Publisher: For Dummies
• Length: 384 Pages
• Weight: 1.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 9.1" x 14.5"

Customer Reviews

Bought, never read!

Bought this book for a new job that didn't happen. You'll probably see itllisted soon!

Great intro to "new" SAS

SAS For Dummies, like all of the books in the Dummies series I've read, is an enjoyable to read, easy to understand introduction to a broad and complex topic. As some have mentioned, the focus of this book is not on "SAS programming." Rather it covers getting your analysis and reporting work done using some of the newer offerings from SAS in the "business intelligence" area, including Enterprise Guide and other products. There is, however, a helpful chapter on what kinds of programming tasks can be done by more advanced users and what long-time SAS programmers may miss. (For a good book on SAS programming, I'd recommend The Little SAS Book). Also included in SAS For Dummies is good coverage of data integration, "Stored Processes" for analysis and reporting, and 2 chapters on analytics. These 2 chapters are especially helpful as an introduction to difficult concepts. Overall, this book provides a helpful overview of getting your data manipulation, analysis, and reporting tasks done with SAS, and a no-nonsense, nuts and bolts understanding of some of the newest software from SAS.

Great intro to SAS- no programming required!

SAS for Dummies may seem like an oxymoron, but this book was very useful at bringing a formerly frustrated user like me back to SAS from S, Systat, and Minitab. When I had tried SAS a few years ago, it was very heavy on programming and learning a fairly complex language (the SAS language.) As a social scientist whose forte isn't programming (I found the syntax and many manuals! of SAS programming very difficult to pick up and use), I wanted easy access to data importing, data management, graphics, and statistical analysis. This book and the new SAS product covered in this book actually fits the bill (Enterprise Guide.) Overall, I like the main product in the book and found the sections on importing and managing data good introductions to something that used to be incredibly hard with just SAS programming. The book requires no programming, but does have a chapter for those who already program in SAS or want to run old SAS programs in EG. I really like that I can create many of the graphs that I spent hours or days before in just a few minutes. The book also has a nice overview of many statistical analyses, including a few techniques I may able to add to my work in the future. After just a few weeks, I can see the real value of SAS since it so much easier to do my work with Enterprise Guide. I can transition much of my simple and advanced analysis to SAS. I highly recommend this book if you are in a similar situation and need to manage, graph, and analyze your data all in one application.

Please Change the Title of the Book

This book should be titled "SAS Enterprise Guide for Dummies", not "SAS for Dummies". If you are looking for a beginner's guide to SAS Enterprise Guide, this is a good choice. However, if you are looking for a guide to classic SAS, the SAS Datastep language, Proc SQL, etc... this is not the book you want.

An excellent reference!

SAS For Dummies is exactly what I was looking for - a high-level reference guide for the capabilities of the Enterprise software, which can be daunting. Perfect for technical managers and non-experts. The information is easy to follow and has enough wry humor thrown in to keep the reader's interest.