Learning SAS in the Computer Lab

I have been teaching SAS for 10 years and never found a satisfactory book ... until now. This book covers the core material for data manipulation and the most common statistical analysis at an ideal depth. The topics and code are presented in enough detail that the material is easy to follow and not so slogged down in detail that it will stop the novice. Beyond the usual material there is stand-out coverage of a couple intermediate level topics like macro language (for automating repeated tasks) and IML (for matrix algebra). There are a couple things missing from the book. Proc SQL (used to manipulate data from a data base perspective) is totally absent as well as the features of modern SAS, like ODS graphics and proc sgplot (which are used to make photo ready graphics). The other weakness in the book is its obvious age. For better or worse, the code in this book should work on any version starting with SAS 6.12. The more modern versions of SAS (and SAS Enterprise Guide) have greatly improved usability and a lot of features that make graphics and reports look much better. You will want to supplement this book with a more up-to-date book like The Little SAS Book: A Primer, Fourth Edition or The Little SAS Book for Enterprise Guide 4.1 to get hints at the new features. Dispite the weaknesses, if you are a novice this is a great place to start to learn SAS code.

I had to write my paper in less than 3 months and found this book enormously helpful in running the most basic tests and analyses on SAS. If you want to have a comprehensive lesson on SAS, I recommend buying a thicker book (like the sky-blue SAS little-book-primer-whatever-that-title-is book). Also, you definitely need to spend many hours in front of the computer with a GOOD dataset that has a sample size less than 30,000 (as i have learned) in order to learn SAS from this book. Anyway, for those who are in a hurry, this book is satisfactory.

it's user-friendly esp. for beginners or for those who have limited experience with SAS.

The problem with some datasets being not available has been taken care of by Duxbury. This is a good reference for those beginning students who need to use SAS and who want some guidance by example of how to implement selected statistical procedures using SAS.

I did not know a thing about SAS programming before I got hold of this book. This book is very simple to read. You learn the basics of SAS programming with the minimum of effort. It comes with a data disk that contains all the data sets you need to do the exercises in the book. This saves you the trouble of typing in the data. I strongly recommend this book.