Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Base SAS Certification Sample Question 11.1

I hope the below Base SAS Certification sample question is helpful when you're studying for the exam. Leave your answer as a comment below and good luck!

-SAS Cert

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What should the blank line below read to be able to output the sum of Qtr_total by the variable paid_by?


proc sort data=ecsql1.employee_donations out=work.employee_donations_sort;
    by paid_by;
run;


data work.donations (keep=paid_by Qtr_total);
    set work.employee_donations_sort;
    by paid_by;
    Qtr_total + Qtr1;
    if _____________;
run;


a) last paid_by
b) paid_by.last
c) paid_by.last = 1
d) last.paid_by = 1

Saturday, April 20, 2013

Becoming Base SAS Certified Tip #2 - Buy the Practice Test

Hi everyone,

To elaborate on my 2nd point in the before blog post, it's very important to buy the Base SAS Certification practice test. This practice test will give you a great benchmark of what your strong and weak areas are and how your should structure the rest of your studying prior to exam day.


You can purchase the practice test from the SAS Institute for $55 at the link below:
https://support.sas.com/edu/schedules.html?ctry=us&id=851


The practice exam is very similar to the actual Base SAS Certification for SAS 9 exam, but there are a few key differences that you should be aware of:

Number of Questions:
The practice exam has 50 questions, while the actual Base SAS Certification exam has 64 questions. Because the practice exam has fewer questions, the SAS Institute recommends that you use 85 minutes to take the practice exam (vs. 110 minutes on the actual exam).

Exam Format:
The practice exam is delivered on one continuous HTML screen. In contrast, the actual Base SAS Certification exam displays only one question on the screen at a time. You are also able to flag questions on the actual exam and return to them later...but you can't do this on the practice exam.

Keeping Time:
There is a timer displayed on the actual Base SAS Certification exam, but this isn't available on the practice exam.



In addition, the SAS Institute claims that the percentage of question topics on the practice exam match the question weights on the actual Base SAS Certification exam. When I finished taking the practice exam, I went back through and wrote down which chapter each question tested...and for me, the top three chapters/sections were as follows:

1) Creating/managing variables
2) SAS functions
3) Creating list reports


Once you've completed the Base SAS Certification practice test, be sure to go back through the questions you missed and review these areas. Chances are you'll be seeing questions similar to these on the exam day.

I hope this has been helpful for you all. Good luck with your studying, and if you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave a comment below!

-SAS Cert

Wednesday, April 17, 2013

Base SAS Certification Example Question 10.1

Assume ecsql1.employee_donations has 6 observations, and qtr1 has 6 values listed below:

100
200
300
.
150
50


What is the value of donation_tot after the 5th DATA step iteration?


data work.donations;
     set ecsql1.employee_donations (drop=qtr2-qtr4);
     retain donation_tot 1000;
     donation_tot + qtr1;
run;


a) 0
b) 750
c) 1750
d) Data step fails due to errors


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Leave your answers as a comment below...good luck!

-SAS Cert

Saturday, April 13, 2013

Base SAS Certification Example Question 9.1

Which is false about the BODY, CONTENTS, and FRAME specifications when creating an HTML file?


a) BODY is the name of an HTML file that contains the procedure output
b) FRAME is the name of an HTML file that integrates the table of contents and the body file
c) If you specify FRAME=, you must also specify CONTENTS=
d) None of the above


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Leave your answer to this Base SAS Certification example question as a comment below...good luck!

-SAS Cert

Tuesday, April 9, 2013

Base SAS Certification Example Question 8.1

By default, PROC MEANS computes how many of the below statistics?

Standard deviation
Range
Count
Minimum value
Variance
Mode

a) 2
b) 3
c) 4
d) None of the above

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PROC MEANS, PROC FREQ, and PROC SUMMARY procedures are a big part of the Base SAS exam, and if you can answer these questions correctly you'll be well on your way to achieving your certification! Be sure to leave your answer as a comment below and good luck!

-SAS Cert

Friday, April 5, 2013

Base SAS Example Question 7.1

Which of the following is a valid statement about the VALUE range in the PROC FORMAT procedure? It cannot be...

a) A single character or numeric value
b) A range of character values
c) A list of unique values separated by commas
d) A combination of character and numeric values


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Leave your answer below...good luck!

-SAS Cert

Tuesday, April 2, 2013

Base SAS Example Question 6.1

dta work.il_corn;
    set corn.state_data;
    if state = 'Illinois';
run;


The keyword "data" is misspelled above. What happens to this program during the compilation phase assuming "corn" is a valid libref?


a) The program fails due to syntax errors
b) The DATA step compiles but doesn't execute
c) The DATA step compiles and executes
d) None of the above

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Leave your answer as a comment below...good luck!

-SAS Cert