SAS Interview Questions

SAS basically means statistical analysis system. It is an integrated set of software products provided towards the users in order to retrieve the information and data management. This goes into some strict policies or even writing reports , graphical statistical analysis along with economic tricks and data mining.

Below are some of the important SAS innterview questions which are important to crack the inteview.

1. What are SAS functions?

Answer: SAS has the ability to do statistical analytics along with economics and data mining. It also to help the users planning a proper set up for their business and also forecasting and decision support along with the features of operation research and project management. SAS also has the ability to take the data provided by the users and improve the total quality of the service providing. SAS also works as a data warehouse by which it means that it has the ability to store up to a specific amount of data provided by the users. It is also used for the purpose of letter access and manipulating for statistical analysis.

2. What’s the basic structure of the SAS base program?

Answer: The basic structure of SAS consists of the two very basic feature. F

  • First of them is the data step which has the ability to recover and manipulate data that is already stored inside the system through the facility of data warehousing.
  • And the second one is the proc step which helps the user to interpret the data in the proper manner that is the current necessary at the time for the data to be manipulated or process through the format.

3. What is the basic syntax style in SAS?

Answer:  Below are some of the examples of syntax for SAS :

  • There should be a semicolon at the end of every line
  • There should be also at least one space between each word or statement in order to properly sort out the data provided by the user.

4. Explain the data step in SAS.

Answer: The data step in SAS is what creates a set of data provided by the user. This basically carries the data along with a data dictionary. This dictionary is basically holding the information about all the variables and their properties in order to have the proper process done through the management of data.

5. What are the data types that SAS contain?

Answer: The data types inside the SAS system are numeric and character only.

6. Which statement does not perform automatic conversions in comparison?

Answer: In the system of SAS, the “where” statement does not have the ability to perform automatic conversions in the cases of comparison that are provided by the data user.

7. What is the difference between Missover and Trunover in SAS ?

Answer: The difference between these two terms is basically that the previous one is such an option that is used in the inference statement and the input statement does not jump to the next line when reading a short line provided instead this facility sets variables to missing. Whereas in the other hand the latter term is basically the work of assigning the raw data value to the variable even in a situation where the total value is shorter than the actual length that is expected by the input statement on the final term.

8. What is the difference between function and proc ?

Answer: The term function has the basic meaning of an average of the total value that has been inserted by the user of several variables in one single observation session. And over that average that has been calculated through function comes the usage of proc which basically means the total additional number of the total edition of summary of all the values that are inserted of a variable that has been divided by the number of observations inside the variable.

9. What is factor analysis?

Answer: The term factor analysis is used for a family of statistical techniques. These are usually associated along with the reduction of a set of observable variables in such terms of a smaller number of latent factors. The actual or the main goal of factor analysis is that you have the data reduction and summarization of all the variables that are inserted into the data section.

10. What is the difference between match-merge and one to one merge?

Answer: A one to one merge is basically suitable for the cases of both data sets in the statement of words that are sorted by ID and each of the single observation in one data set has also containing of a corresponding observation data in the other data set. The match merging system is utilized when the previous observations are not able to match with each other and along with the suitable situation, match merging is applied.

11. Which is the command that is used to save logs in the internal file?

Answer: PROC PRINTTO is the command which is used to save the logs into the external file provided in the SAS system.

12. What is SAS test?

Statistical Analysis System, commonly known as SAS is considered as a set of multiple software that is integrated and used for various operations like Data Management, Predictive – Perspective & Descriptive Analysis, Quality Improvement, Business Analysis, Application Development, etc.

13. What are SAS functions?

Answer: SAS functions are used as part of the DATA statements. They take the data variables as arguments and return the result which is stored into another variable. Depending on the type of function, the number of arguments it takes can vary.

14. What are Do loops in SAS?

Answer: ​An example of DO Loops that you can run in a SAS Data Step are conditional DO Loops. There are two forms of conditional DO Loops:

  • DO UNTIL loops and DO WHILE loops. DO UNTIL loops continue executing until the condition you have specified becomes true.

15. Is it easy to learn SAS?

Answer: SAS is an expensive commercial software and is mostly used by large corporations with huge budgets. You don’t require prior knowledge in programming to learn SAS, and its easy-to-use GUI makes it the easiest to learn of all the three.

16. What does Truncover & Missover mean in SAS?

Answer: As the words indicate, MissOver will set missing if given data do not match SAS instruction (e.g. INPUT statement); TruncOver will truncate data according to SAS instruction. Missover is best used when you have missing at the END column of data. The TRUNCOVER option, like the MISSOVER option, overrides the default behavior of the INPUT statement. The MISSOVER option, however, causes the INPUT statement to set a value to missing if the statement is unable to read an entire field because the field length specified in the INPUT statement is too short.

17. What is Infile statement in SAS?

Answer: INFILE and FILE are the statements that are used in SAS to generally link to raw files; that is, files that normally contain only data and no data dictionary. INFILE is used to point to input files and FILE points to output files.

18. What are SAS procedures?

The PROC step consists of a group of SAS statements that call and execute a procedure, usually with a SAS data set as input. PROCs can also perform functions such as displaying information about a SAS data set.

19. What does put & input functions do in SAS?

Answer: The PUT function returns a numeric value as a character string. The INPUT function returns the value of the character string as a SAS date value using a SAS date informat.

20. What is Call routine in SAS?

Answer: A SAS function is a built-in method to perform a computation or system manipulation and return a value. A CALL routine alters variable values or performs other system functions. CALL routines are similar to functions, but differ from functions in that you cannot use them in assignment statements.

21. Which is better SAS or R?

Answer: SAS is the most comfortable language across all three to learn and can be picked up by anyone without a prior programming language. R has a slightly steeper learning curve compared to SAS and Python. Since R is a low-level programming language, requires proficiency and basic programming orientation.

22. What are SAS skills?

Answer: SAS (previously “Statistical Analysis System”) is a software suite developed by SAS Institute for advanced analytics, multivariate analysis, business intelligence, data management, and predictive analytics.

23. How long does it take to get SAS certified?

Answer: It depends on the skill set. Normally for in depth on SAS, 6 months should be enough to get certified.

24. What are arrays in SAS?

Answer: A SAS array is not a new data structure, the array name is not a variable, and arrays do not define additional variables. Rather, a SAS array provides a different name to reference a group of variables.

25. What does Do while loop do in SAS?

Answer: When you use a DO WHILE loop, SAS executes the DO loop while the expression you’ve specified is true. Here’s the general form of a DO WHILE loop: DO WHILE (expression); action statements; END; where expression is any valid SAS expression enclosed in parentheses.

26. What are Datalines in SAS?

Answer: The DATALINES statement is the last statement in the DATA step and immediately precedes the first data line. Use a null statement (a single semicolon) to indicate the end of the input data. You can use only one DATALINES statement in a DATA step.

27. What is put statement in SAS?

Answer: The PUT statement writes variable values and character strings to the SAS log or to an external location while the INPUT statement reads raw data in external files or data lines entered instream. Both the PUT and OUTPUT statements create output in a DATA step.

28. What is delimiter in SAS?

Answer: A delimited file is a plain text file that contains a separator between the data fields. For example, to read Comma Separated Value (CSV) files in SAS 6, you had to preprocess the files in order for SAS to recognize that there were missing values between consecutive commas.

29. What does Firstobs mean in SAS?

Answer: The FIRSTOBS= data set option affects a single, existing SAS data set. Use the FIRSTOBS= system option to affect all steps for the duration of your current SAS session. FIRSTOBS= is valid for input (read) processing only. Specifying FIRSTOBS= is not valid for output or update processing.

30. What is SAS macro?

Answer: SAS – Macros. Advertisements. SAS has a powerful programming feature called Macros which allows us to avoid repetitive sections of code and to use them again and again when needed. It also helps create dynamic variables within the code that can take different values for different run instances of the same code.

31. What is Proc Tabulate in SAS?

Answer: Proc tabulate is predominately used to make nice looking tables. This procedure is often used to create tables to be used in publications because it allows for a great deal of manipulation and control over almost every aspect of the table.

32. What is best format in SAS?

Answer: When a format is not specified for writing a numeric value, SAS uses the BESTw. format as the default format. The BESTw. format attempts to write numbers that balance the conflicting requirements of readability, precision, and brevity.

33. What are SAS functions?

Answer: Functions are applied to a single variable or to a set of variables for analyzing and processing data. There are hundreds of built-in functions in SAS, we will be looking at the most frequently used and important ones.

34. What is a SAS date value?

Answer: SAS Date Values SAS software represents dates as the number of days since a reference date. The reference date, or date zero, used for SAS date values is 1 January 1960. For example, 3 February 1960 is represented by SAS as 33. SAS software correctly represents dates from the year 1582 to the year 20,000.

35. What is Call Missing in SAS?

Answer: The CALL MISSING routine assigns an ordinary numeric missing value (.) to each numeric variable in the argument list. The CALL MISSING routine assigns a character missing value (a blank) to each character variable in the argument list.

36. What is CALL Symput SAS?

Answer: CALL SYMPUT is a SAS® language routine that assigns a value produced in a DATA step to a macro variable. It is one of the DATA step interface tools that provides a dynamic link for communication between the SAS language and the macro facility.

37. Does SAS use SQL?

Answer: Yes, SAS can do everything SQL does but much more. SQL is just a language for querying a database of table or tables (relational). SAS has a PROC called SQL where you can use the language to query SAS data sets. SQL is just a language.

38. What companies use SAS?

Answer: SAS. Google. Facebook. Twitter. Netflix. Accenture. WNS. Genpact.

39. Is SAS a good career option?

Answer: SAS is an evergreen skill now with many companies having SAS system. SAS Analytics skills are the most valuable skills to have in today’s job market. Hence learning SAS can help you get one of the best & high paying jobs in market.

Above were some of the SAS interview questions for your to prepare.