SAS Tutorial for Beginners: SAS Programming Basics and Advanced Procedures Explained

SAS is an abbreviation for Statistical Analysis System. It is a programming language that performs various operations for statistical analysis. For instance, you can use this language if you have a lot of information in a spreadsheet that you need to visualize in tables, graphs, or other forms of visualization. Since it is important to learn about the meaning of this language, I will begin my SAS tutorial by giving you the basic rules and the possible tasks to be achieved with this language. 

This course for SAS training includes everything that you need: from the basics of SAS to advanced procedures. If you are a beginner, I recommend that you do not skip any lessons in this SAS tutorial as all of them contain important information. 

What is SAS programming?

The SAS programming is frequently related to a data-driven analysis that might lead to specific conclusions or predictions for future trends. In many cases, business owners learn SAS programming for the purpose of figuring out the best marketing or business strategies. SAS helps to take raw data and transform it into readable formats. 

Fun fact: in the beginning, SAS was mainly used in agricultural projects. However, now, it is applied in various industry fields. Therefore, you will definitely find ways how to improve your work or business by choosing to learn SAS. 

How can SAS be used? 

After deciding to learn SAS, you will notice that you can perform many actions with this fourth-generation programming language. For example, you can improve your data-management process, and visualize your data in graphs for professional reports. Additionally, one of the most important aspects of SAS training is using this programming language for analyzing data statistically and mathematically. From such research, you can draw conclusions or make predictions related to different fields. 

What will you find in this course? 

In this SAS tutorial, I will go over the basics of SAS programming first to avoid any misunderstandings in the other lessons. I highly encourage you to stick with me through the theoretical part since the presented information will be highly helpful if you want to learn SAS programming. I will go over the PROC steps and DATA steps that are the main building blocks of any SAS program. 

Additionally, your SAS application needs to read data into SAS data sets if you want to analyze information. In this SAS tutorial, I will explain the meaning of the SAS data set and its structure. Let’s not forget that I will give you details on SAS attributes, SAS Windows environment, and some good programming practices. 

After reviewing the theoretical material in this SAS tutorial, we will start looking at the actual procedures that you can perform. For instance, the first lesson of the second section will show you how you can read data into a SAS data set.

In the next lesson, we will focus on reading instream data lines. Later on, we will look at a multitude of specific actions that are common when using SAS programming. I will also help you avoid some of the common mistakes that beginners make when learning SAS programming.