The Little SAS Book: A Primer, Third Edition Reviews

• Excellent book - but not for everyone

  
  By A3V8JYX3LIUG6K on 2005-08-25
  I came to SAS with many years as a statistician (using STATA, SPSS, GLIM, BMDP and other packages) and as a programmer (Delphi, C, Unix shell, FoxPro etc). I recently changed jobs and had to learn SAS asap. My job currently involves data 'manipulation'. I don't mean that in any negative sense, just that I have to read the data in, perform lots of calculations, merge data, transpose data, check data etc etc. It's very important that I don't lose data in the process and also that I don't create (rubbish) data either.
  
  I bought this book to get me up to speed with SAS. I inherited some pretty complex procedures from my predecessor which I have to adapt and, to some degree, rewrite for other data sets. It was a very formidable challenge, despite my experience.
  
  This book is excellent. The presentation is clean and clear. The two-page format is brilliant. Small enough for you to grasp the basic concept without too much difficulty but large enough to equip you to delve into SAS help if you have to (an action I'd recommend you don't do unless you have too).
  
  Downside? For me, none. Others have mentioned that the coverage of the statistical procedures is limited. This is particularly so if you receive your data pre-packaged and you don't have to do much data preparation. But the number of SAS statistical procedures and all variations therein is so large that you couldn't even begin to cover them in a book this size. Personally, I consider what they DO cover to be logical and sufficient for most beginners. There are other books which might be more appropriate for those who seek more information on statistical procedures.
  
  Some people have suggested the chapter on data input is overdone. While it was very interesting to see how SAS could read ASCII files apparently written by someone on speed, I'm not convinced that input on that level is very relevant now. Much of this chapter could be relegated to an appendix.
  
  Others have complained about the lack of exercises. Including exercises (and their solutions) would have seriously blown out this book. And let's face it, exercises only give you a taste of the possibilities. But you can easily make up your own exercises - and it's probably a better way to learn. Want to learn how PROC TRANSPOSE (a slightly tricky, not necessarily intuitive procedure for beginners) works? Create a few simple data sets and explore the options. Easy!
  
  I wonder why it's called 'The **LITTLE** SAS Book". Presumably, in its earlier incarnations, it was smaller, but it's now 300+ pages long and contains little dross. Qua size and qua content, its not little, it's just the right size.
  
  

• Great Intro to SAS

  
  By A19AJPGXEJWIUJ on 2004-12-31
  This book is a primer - it's own title indicates it as such. A primer is what you give to people to get them familiar with something beforehand. SAS is very powerful but it is not intuitive to use - a la Excel. If you haven't used SAS before, reading over this book is a great way to get familiar with it and a nice reference to have for someone new to SAS programming. I learned how to use SAS from this book and the book covering empirical financial research. The disappointed people here are expecting a bit much from something called a 'primer' or simply don't find SAS easy to use. Neither of these shortcomings are the fault of this work. If you've never used SAS or are very new to it, this book is quite good - and that's what a Primer is for.
  
  

• Enough to get you started, but not much else

  
  By ATZ1LTONGHOP6 on 2008-03-24
  During my first week on the job as an actuarial analyst, I got handed a copy of this book and told to teach myself SAS from it. I read every page of it and worked through every example, and by the end of the week I understood the basics of using SAS, but not much else. This is an excellent book for someone who has never seen SAS before in their life; it assumes no prior knowledge and teaches everything from scratch. However, your average SAS user isn't going to be using this program to simply calculate means and variances, and this is where this book fails. The most complex statistics this book covers are simple things, like means and variances, and it is necessary to purchase further manuals if you are interested in learning more advanced techniques. By all means, buy this book, but be aware that it is likely that you will need to buy other books to accompany it.
  
  

• Review of The Little SAS Book

  
  By AZIY30NQ127BP on 2006-08-21
  The book gives good down to earth instructions on using SAS. It does not get bogged down with the technical aspects of SAS or even programming in general. A book on driving, for example, may tell you how an internal combustion engine works when all you want to know is how to start the thing. So it is with this book. It gets you started and it gets you moving quickly so that within an hour or so you can do some pretty fancy stuff. But it also explains a lot, such as what a SAS file really is. The only drawback I have is a lack of relevant examples. There are many good examples, don't get me wrong, but there are too many times when the explanation is not followed by an example and it always seems to be the case that that is what I needed to see. Also, many examples are shown in a vacuum. For instance, there are many good examples embedded with the code around it, but then there are the examples that show you how to write the instruction for something, but it is not shown in context, it is simply a line on a page. Perhaps there just isn't room for it all, but it would always be helpful to see where all of this falls relative to the procedure or step you are in. Never-the-less, I love this book, it's great. I have put away all of my other SAS volumes and keep only this book in my desk, it's really all I need.
  
  

• Excellent for beginners

  
  By A1P4JKCWKVGOJ0 on 2005-09-12
  This is the best book to learn SAS as a begineer. No need to have any prior knowledge in SAS. Read this book and you can work on SAS comfortably. This book will give you enough knowledge to learn more by practicing SAS practically.
  
  
• Good book
  By A10BY9EQ7NX8RI on 2005-08-29
  This is a great book for ppl who want to learn the basics of SAS programming.Its fast and easy to understand with a lot of examples.
  
  
• Recommend book to all scientists with little SAS experience
  By A3T08U9CUAVXW9 on 2005-08-02
  I'm a graduate student in the sciences looking to use SAS to "crunch" some of my data. Unfortunately, I've never taken a class in it. This book was recommended to me by the professor that teaches the SAS course at my college. It is extremely helpful and walks you through every step that you need to do to make your data work for you!
  
  
• Life Saver!
  By A61TBKB1S118G on 2005-06-16
  I got my first job out of college as a data analyst. After a few days on the job, it felt like I was drowning. The reason is I had never worked before with "real" data. My thin and rather compact SAS book from college (used in an introductory undergraduate stats class) barely did anything to help alleviate the immense pressure that I felt I was under. Then...I bought this book.
  
  Knowing the theory and understanding how to interpret statistical test results is only part of the picture (which this book will NOT help you do)...preparing the data for analysis is also very important and this book helped me on that end big time. This book got me there fast and now I can focus more on doing my job rather than staring at the screen wondering how I am going to get my data to the point where it's actually usable.
  
  If you are in a similar situation as I was and you need to get up and running with SAS fast, I can only tell you that this book helped remove tons of weight off my shoulders.
  
  
• I love this book so much that I would ...
  By on 2004-02-10
  I see that *The Little SAS Book* is now in its 3rd edition. My experiences were with the 2nd edition. I used that version of the book a few years ago when I was doing intensive work with SAS.

  This book was a life saver. I agree with the positive reviewers and disagree with the negative ones. Yes this book covers the basics - but that is EXACTLY why the book was written!

  Take it from me, even though I used SAS for sophisticated data analysis (mostly financial econometrics) and regularly used more advanced features of SAS and higher level books and manuals, I still OFTEN referred to *The Little SAS Book* during my SAS programming days. With all due respect to its competitors (Cody's books, etc.), I found *The Little SAS Book* to be the most useful and the most often used.

  I regularly recommended this book to those who were new to SAS and they always appreciated my recommendation.

  I can go on gushing about how great this book is, but to sum up in an efficient manner how much I love this book, let me leave you with the following: If either Lora or Susan (the authors of the book) were ever looking for a husband, I would marry either of them in a heartbeat!
  
  

• SAS Primer book
  By A1RASS1IIJW66M on 2007-01-11
  This book offers instruction through definitions and examples. I constantly return to it (since im still learning how to use the program). The way that the chapters and index are listed makes this book feel like an excellent reference guide. In that sense it is highly functional above and beyond its first read through. I never seem to get things on the first try and this book , through the content orginization, allows me to find and return to the exact section I need to re-read. The price is worth it in terms of both the content presentation and the chapter organization. My favorite part of the book is the example section. You can actually see the code needed to carry out the commands as well as the results that the commands would give. Coming from SPSS (menu driven format) I was very fearful of having to learn a computer language. This book took that aprehension away in no time. I would suggest that anyone starting out with this program buy this book.
  
  
• useful introduction to SAS
  By AG35NEEFCMQVR on 2006-09-09
  [A review of the 3rd Edition.]
  
  The size of the SAS portfolio of code has grown hugely over the years. But for the person encountering SAS for the first time, this book can be a useful brief exposition. There is enough material covered here for you to do useful statistical analysis on simple data. While getting you acquainted with the style of using SAS and writing SAS command scripts.
  
  Of necessity, you need some prior statistics knowledge. Like remembering the first 4 moments of a distribution, up to skewness and kurtosis. Just keep in mind that this book is not a statistics text per se. Rather, it lets you apply many common stats functions for your data, without you having to code these in some language like C or Java. The text shows how you can analyse data without being a programmer.
  
  
• SAS with understanding, for the beginner
  By A2RCPQ4WKLG3N7 on 2006-07-13
  Earlier this summer, I started a project that involves several hundred gigabytes of data. Everyone told me that I needed to learn SAS.
  
  I started to look through online manuals. Little help there. They tell you what to do but fail to tell you how the program actually works. That's knowledge without understanding.
  
  I bought "The Little SAS Book". It explains how SAS works, enabling me to understand how to better use SAS.
  
  For example, on page 8, they explain that "DATA steps execute line by line and observation by observation". They don't stop there. They explain the implications of this critical feature of SAS in several paragraphs. Then they solidify the lesson with a graphic. The implications of this lesson are reiterated throughout the book.
  
  This is the right book for a beginner. The authors make sure that you understand what your commands are doing, give you bite-size lessons, and let you get your work done. That's knowledge with understanding.
  
  
• SAS
  By ASPCL7EPCT9EL on 2008-11-01
  This was a great book to read. I was very confused in lecture because I am not programming savy. This book really helped me a lot. Everything is explained in simple terms and makes so much sense.
  
  
  
  
  
• LITTLE SAS BOOK
  By A1HKMXC6T2G4PU on 2008-10-11
  Very good material for a new SAS learner. Easy to read and to understand. I recommend this book for every SAS beginner.
  
  
• Whew, this book saved me!
  By A35UDHRLC435AT on 2007-09-30
  I've only read two chapters of this book, but compared to the text and course notes my instructor gave out....this book helps me greatly!!
  
  
• Excellent book to learn SAS with
  By A2RSGGERRDLD60 on 2007-09-07
  This is an excellent book to learn SAS with, it goes through everything you need to know to get up and running with SAS. Unlike SAS manuals that go on and on for hundreds of pages talking about everything but what you need to know to do something, this book gets you up and running in very little time. I highly recommend it for anyone who needs to be able to become functional in SAS quickly.
  
  
• Excellent for new SAS user, but....
  By A29OCCR76G47FX on 2007-08-09
  This is excellent for any new SAS user but the topics are introductory. If you are SAS naive and trying to solve a specific statistical problem in a short time, it won't be helpful to you.
  
  
• An useful little gem!
  By A1I3OX4CNNJW2R on 2006-11-10
  This is a compact book with easy to follow explanations about how to leverage the power of SAS.
  
  
• easy, handy and clear
  By AVS2UXDMEYAVS on 2006-11-09
  This book is well organized, easy and handy, very good for beginners.
  
  
• highly informational book
  By AC25NZ9Q0ZNN4 on 2006-11-06
  As a beginner to SAS, and having to essentially teach myself to use it for demographic analysis purposes, this book is extremely helpful. While it isn't always a sure thing that the examples given will be what you need, it does contain a large amount of helpful information that got me started. It really is like learning a new language, so don't expect to flip through the book and become fluent. Rather, it is something that will keep you from pulling your hair out when you get an error message for the fifth time and finally locate the problem.
  
  
• The best in class
  By A6PENB01TG2DK on 2006-10-22
  Little SAS Book is a wonderful starter on SAS . It's simply a great book that every SAS analyst should keep a copy of . I read it first in 2001 and was impressed with the content flow and description. Recently I had to conduct a SAS training and I cannot explain how much useful the second reading was to refresh my own knowledge. It skips lots of practical use of SAS like automation or reporting with excel as a delivery channel. Also less information is found on how to work with data warehouses or SQL specific help. Anyone who is new to SAS must read this first to last and try out all exercises. That will really improve his/her comfort level . Also recommended for Base SAS certifications.
  
  
  
  
  
• this is super useful book
  By A1O7I1QSA8O5Q on 2006-08-02
  I just discovered this book two months ago and have been using it non-stop. I am new to sas although I have been using it for a few years not intensely. This is the first book that makes me feel I can really learn the sas code - it is well organized and well written, provides examples for eveyrthing and has a very nice glossary in teh back. Great tool to learn how to use sas and feel confident with it.
  
  
• Great book for starters
  By A31F1G0S4GXAKY on 2005-07-01
  I bought this book since I needed to learn SAS ASAP. I had previously had only one graduate class in which SAS was taught but now have to use SAS with large databases. I should say here that I am a physician and not a statistician but this book has really helped me get a handle on SAS.
  
  I found the book very easy to understand and follow. I really like the fact that each topic is only 2 pages so it makes it simple and quick to follow. However, this same feature (only sometimes) makes a complicated topic difficult to understand. However, I must commend the authors for a simple effective writing style that makes a difficult topic like SAS easier to understand. The examples they give in the topics are great.
  
  The book does not, however, cover everything (an example is the SUBSTRING function) and the index of the book is quite poor. If you are working with a database, I would recommend that you get another book along with this one (e.g. SAS programming by example by Ron Cody).
  
  Overall, this is a great book and I highly recommend it.
  
  
• Very easy book to work with SAS
  By A29RFIORTIR6HU on 2008-03-03
  The book is very complete and easy to work with SAS, it isn't for starters, you can use it a lot. It is very helpfull.
  
  
• SAS small book
  By A2AH7TPLL390WM on 2010-02-26
  This book is great, good for beginner in SAS or Biostat lab class. It give clear and very easy instructions to follow.I would recommend this book to anyone who taking these introduction classes to programing getting this book. It is worth the money.
  
  
• The Little SAS Book: A Primer, Third Edition
  By A11T02HKJTGDX5 on 2009-09-23
  I am starting to use SAS and I found the book useful in address the questions I had.
  
  
• little SAS book
  By A3KL4SJHC5Z9Z on 2009-02-09
  This book is formatted for the average person to understand and is clearly written in an understandable "language".
  
  
• good book.
  By A3RB2M6VCC6I16 on 2007-05-21
  I've used SPSS, but never SAS. This book is well organized and helped me to start using SAS quickly.
  
  
• Best for learners
  By A3FY8TILOLQW6X on 2007-03-09
  A "must have" book for SAS learners. Some of the best features of the book ---well organised, easy to follow, simple examples that help to understand the material.
  A good reference book for SAS BASE and ADVANCED certification exams.
  
  
  
• Best book for SAS learners
  By A14BNTRURGZ7LO on 2007-03-08
  Little SAS is one of the best books for researchers and SAS beginners who want to work with SAS. Programmes were simple and the language was very understandable with lot of examples.
  
  

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