SAS For Dummies

The 2nd edition of this book has the same terrible title as the first. It should have been called SAS Enterprise Guide for Dummies because it has little information on coding in SAS and a lot on the Enterprise Guide (EG) 4.2 graphical user interface. The book walks you through the range of basic tasks to be done prior to data analysis using EG. Topics from importing, to subsetting/combining data sets, to producing web pages with summary statistics and graphics are covered in an easy to read format. The second edition does not add a lot of new material (one stand out thing is an example on using new SAS graphics code). So don't bother picking this up if you have the first edition.While I like this book, there are a couple weaknesses. There is not enough information on how to check the quality of your data. While the author explains how to make basic subsets of data, there is not enough guidance on how to do more complicated subsetting. For example, taking a subset of records/subjects from a data file using an average is doable using the graphical user interface in EG but the book only mentions it in the context of writing code. Another problem is in the lack of information on doing statistics. If you need a book on analysis this is not a particularly good choice because the discussion is limited to very basic correlation, regression and ANOVA. On the other hand, the author focuses in on basic data validation and the tools needed to check statistical assumptions. So, this combined with a "real" statistics book is an excellent combination. There are a couple of sections that I have not seen written up in any other SAS book including working with OLAP and integration with MS Office as well as a brief introduction to SAS Enterprise Miner.So, overall this is a good introductory book for the money.

Gave me the background I needed to test an upgrade to the SAS servers. Complete but not too detailed. I recommend it.

Given the title of the book, you would think it would introduce and teach you SAS code programming. But, it really does not. It teaches you how to use SAS Enterprise Guide and SAS Add-In for Microsoft Office Suite. I can see why many readers would get rather upset at this inaccurate disclosure as conveyed by the title of the book. I think the book should have had a more accurate title or maybe including a subtitle. If you read the back cover of the book, this issue is partly sorted out; But, only partly.There is another issue with this book. And, in my mind it is more important than the mistitling of the book. The visuals are terrible. Many times they were unclear, fuzzy, gray-on-gray, and downright unviewable. The book illustrated some Box plots where you litterally could not see the Box plots at all. Many other graphs were hardly better. Given that SAS Entreprise Guide (SEG) is a beautiful visual interface. That is what makes it user friendly. It is kind of challenging to learn it from a book that does not impart the visual interface well.The book is not all bad. The two authors are well qualified to teach you about SEG. One of the authors contributed to the initial development of SEG. And, the other managed the SEG development team for a long time. Given that, they both know what they are talking about. In a classic for Dummies style, this book is easily accessible with a lot of examples.SEG and the related SAS Add-In for Excel are remarkably powerful and user friendly tool. This renders SAS, a very powerful quantitative program, very accessible to non-coders or non-programmers. SEG really serves two purposes. First, it is a great tool for non-programmers who have no intention to ever use a SAS code, or at least keep this coding to a bare minimum. Second, it is also a great tool as a training wheel for aspiring SAS coders. The latter may have acquired good coding aptitude using other programs such as R, Matlab, and Python. And, they would look to get up the speed quickly to be productive in no time using SEG while learning in a more deliberate way SAS codes.As you can tell, I am a lot more jazzed about the potential of SEG than the overall teaching quality of this book. I later went through the SEG tutorial that, contrary to this book, has excellent visuals. And, I finally could "see" what the authors were really talking about. The book I got, with its poor graphic quality, should not have been released. As is, I am not sure it was the best use of my time to learn SEG with this book.I view it as a missed opportunity. Given the outstanding background of the authors, and a pretty genuine effort from themselves, with descent visuals this book learning impact on the reader could have been a multiple better than it is. If you are going to write a book teaching about a visual interface you better have good visuals. Otherwise, the readers will have very little to work with and won't learn a thing.

I was going to be testing the SAS Enterprise Guide 5.1 for our company and had no prior experience with SAS apps. I was told to get another book ("The Little Blue SAS Book"), which should help me work with the app. It was ok but did not explain many things very well for a newby" using SAS.I looked into the "Sas for Dummies" book and it plugged the gaps very well!I highly, very highly recommend this book if you are thinking about using SAS Enterprise Guide, you won't regret it!

The book was for my wife who is taking a class that requires a mess of SAS programming. The "For Dummies" books always come to the rescue when you need to know everything about a subject. It arrived new and full of the info she needed. So yeah... 5 stars.

Nice book, but too basic for what I wanted. This is beginner STAT.

Sas for dummies delivers what it says, a general brush on the characteristics of SAS. Depending on the capabilities and by-products installed could be of more help; in my case, the OLAP interface and the office plugging is lacking, making half the book not really helpful. Personally I would recommend the little SAS Book for enterprise.

The books are great and are in good condition but a ten day window to get them is not good. These same books can be found in any major book store and used book stores and Craigslist. The vendor should speed up the shipping process to compete. Thank you.

thanks

This book is value for money for starters - step by steps with problems, solution, and examples to run through.

Useless for programming.

Give overview of SAS and how to use it using Enterprise Guide but helps less on programming

I am disappointed with this book. This book doesn't cover any important topic and it just have a dry things which you don't understand..Just a theory and nothing practical..