Resources for learning SAS if you already familiar with R [closed]

StackOverflow https://stackoverflow.com/questions/501917

  •  20-08-2019
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Question

I would like to learn some SAS because I am interested in a few industries that tend to use it exclusively. However, I don't want to get stuck with a resource that assumes I know nothing about statistical programming. Is there a good guide for programmers with statistics experience in R?

Thanks, Steven

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Solution

Robert A Muenchen read your mind. He's published a free manuscript that later became a Springer book called R for SAS and SPSS users. It's really written for folks who know SAS or SPSS but would like to learn R. Luckily he gives examples of how to do things in all three languages. It will also work well if you know R and want to back into SAS. It started as a free manuscript and then Springer helped him flesh it out into a full book. Here's some links:

In addition, here's a paper on the topic of passing data back and forth between R and SAS.

When you talk to people in industry keep in mind that to many end users 'SAS' may mean a GUI interface into one of the SAS tools. I learned SAS programming in graduate school and wrote programs in it for years. To me SAS was a language. I remember having a really awkward cocktail talk with the wife of a friend who told me she was learning SAS. I was excited and started talking about PROC statements and DATA STEP programming. She tried to be polite but pretty soon I could tell she had no idea what I was going on about. She was a forecast analyst and was using a SAS forecast tool that had a GUI on top which she was learning to use. I soon realized that when people talk about using SAS it is about as specific as 'using Microsoft.' So it is worth brushing up on the suite of SAS BI tools, Data Mining tools, etc. I think they all have SAS language underneath them, but don't assume someone is talking about SAS programming just 'cause they say 'SAS.'

OTHER TIPS

The Little SAS Book is the only SAS book I have seen. I liked it as an introduction but you may still find it useful. There's a preview on Google Books at the link.

most sas manuals are on line. here is the list of everything: http://support.sas.com/documentation/

this may be a good place to start: http://support.sas.com/documentation/cdl/en/basess/58133/PDF/default/basess.pdf

it depends on how much of an R guru you are, but if you tend to think in terms of vectors, then you will feel more at home with sas/iml or stat studio 3 (which will be renamed to iml studio), which has a matrix based scripting language. No passing functions, nor closures, though. sas institute has announced that they will provide interfaces to R in the iml studio. see: http://support.sas.com/rnd/app/studio/Rinterface2.html

The problem with 'SAS for Dummies' is that it's written for people getting data out of SAS; it's a limited book. I strongly, strongly urge you to get 'The Little SAS Book'. It's sweet. When I was a graduate student learning SAS, I'd have gladly paid twice the cover price for it.

Two answers. If you are primarily interested in using SAS procedures to do statistics, I recommend the SAS and R book by Horton and Kleinman. They have a blog that you can browse and see their approach: http://sas-and-r.blogspot.com/ It is an example driven book that does not give a lot of background, but is a handy reference for people who know what they want to do and just need to look up the syntax.

If you are a serious programmer who develops your own algorithms and you prefer to program in a matrix-vector language that has a lot of similarities to MATLAB and R, then look into the SAS/IML matrix language. You can browse the "Getting Started" chapter of the book Statistical Programming with SAS/IML Software at http://support.sas.com/publishing/authors/wicklin.html (Full disclosure: I am the author.)

As an added bonus, you can call R from SAS/IML programs, so it is convenient for someone who wants to do an analysis in SAS and compare the results to a similar analysis done in R.

SAS for Dummies is supposed to be pretty good. I haven't read it, but people here at work seem to like it.

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