Basic and Advanced SAS Interview Questions

SAS is the technology that is used for statistical analysis using various methods. You can learn and become a master of SAS technology by completing SAS training from an authorized center. Now it is a good arrangement of SAS online training for the professionals who are stuck with their busy schedule and office work. A professional can learn SAS online on his comfortable time when he/she gets.  

1. What is SAS and SAS programming?

Answer: SAS stands for “Statistical Analytics System”, it is a software suite for advanced analytics, multivariate analysis, business intelligence, data management, and prophetic analytics. SAS also provides a graphical point-and-click user interface, which is beneficial for non-technical users and offers more advanced options through the SAS language.

SAS Programming: – SAS programming is just a simple programming which is written or developed using a high programming language and used to perform some operation on given data/task. It gives some specific conclusion in a very appropriate manner.

2. Brief about the features of SAS.

Here are some specific features of SAS:

• Fastest in accessing raw data files and the data in external databases and database management systems.
• It is easy to manage data using advanced tools for data entry, editing, retrieval, formatting, and conversion.
• SAS helps in analyzing data using detailed statistics, multiple updated techniques, forecasting and modeling, and linear programming.
• It is used in presenting data using reports and business statistical graphics.

These functionalities have been categorized as Statistics, Data and Text Mining, Data Visualization, Forecasting, and Optimization

3. Brief the comparison of SAS with other data analytics tools.

Here are a few specific scenarios:

• If you are a fresher candidate and entering in the analytics industry (specifically so in India), I would say that SAS should be your first language. It is easy to learn and holds highest job market share.
• If you are someone who has previously spent time in the industry, you should try and expand your proficiency be learning a new tool.
• For the experts and pros in trade, they should know at least 2 of these. That would add a lot of scope for the future and open up new opportunities.
• If you are in a start-up / freelancing, R / Python is more useful.

4. Can you describe few capabilities of SAS Framework?

Answer: The four known capabilities of SAS framework are as follows:

Accessibility:  SAS is developed using high level programming language, hence it allows us to access data through various sources – Excel file, Raw database, Oracle database and SAS datasets.

Manage: – It is easy to manage data to subset data, create variables, validate and clean data.

Analyze: – Proper accessed and managed data makes analysis easier. It is easy to perform simple analysis like frequency and averages, complex analysis including regression and forecasting. SAS is known for its gold standard for statistical analysis.

Presentation: – All the above mentioned capabilities make the presentation process simple and understandable. Managed data is accessible in the proper format that is available for printing the report, writing them to data file or publishing them online.

5. Do you know the function of an output statement in a SAS Program?

Answer: – Output statement – We can use this statement to reserve the summary statistics in a SAS data set. This information is used to create customized reports and to preserve previous information about a process.

OUTPUT statement can be used to:

• Identify the name of the output data set, and
• Estimate and save percentiles which are not automatically computed by the CAPABILITY process.

6. Do you know the function of Stop statement in a SAS Program?

Answer: The Stop statement in SAS program causes SAS to stop processing the current data step immediately and to resume processing statement after the end of current data step.

7. Brief the difference of using drop = data set option in data statement and set statement.

Answer: Drop = data set is used in the set statement for a specific reason that is; “not to process certain variables and not to show in the new data set”, whereas, it is used in the data statement to “process certain variables, but do not want to show in the new data set”.

8. How to read the last observation to a new data set, if there is given an unsorted data set?

Answer: To read the last observation to a new data set, we can use this option; end=data set

data work.calculus;

set work.comp end=last;

If last;

run;

Where calculus is a new data set to be shaped and comp is the current data set. Last is the provisional variable (initialized to 0) which is set to 1 when the set statement reads the last observation.

9. you tell the difference between reading data from an external file and reading data from an existing data set?

Answer: The main difference between reading data from an external file and reading data from an existing data set is that SAS recollects the values of the variables from one reflection to the next at the time of reading an existing data set with the SET statement, whereas, at the time of reading the data from an external file, only the observations are read and if it is required then variables will have to be re-declared.

10. List the primary data types in SAS.

Answer: Character and Numeric, are the two main data types in SAS. Read More