A00-215 SAS Certified Associate: Programming Fundamentals Using SAS 9.4 Questions and Answers

The correct answer is A: Ods excel='c:\report.xlsx' style=analysis;. This syntax is correct for the ODS EXCEL statement in SAS, where you specify the path and filename, followed by the 'style' option to apply a specific style template to the output Excel file. The 'style=analysis' is used to set the output appearance according to the 'ANALYSIS' style template provided by SAS. Option B is syntactically incorrect and does not use the 'style' option correctly. Option C incorrectly places a slash which is not syntactically valid in this context, and Option D misses the equals sign and quotes which are necessary for correct syntax in SAS.References:

• SAS documentation on ODS EXCEL statement: SAS Support: ODS EXCEL Statement

The report shown is a cross-tabulation of 'Region' by 'Product'. The FREQ Procedure indicates that PROC FREQ has been used, and the presence of 'Frequency', 'Percent', 'Row Percent', and 'Column Percent' suggests that a cross tabulation (or contingency table) has been requested. The correct code for this output would include the tables statement to specify the two variables ('Region' and 'Product') with an asterisk between them, which indicates a request for a cross-tabulation of these two categorical variables, and the crosslist option to display the table in a cross-tabulated list format. Therefore, option D is the correct answer:

proc freq data=sashelp.shoes;

tables region*product / crosslist;

run;

Options A and C use the order=freq option incorrectly, as this option would order the table by frequency counts rather than providing a cross-tabulation. Option B is missing the crosslist option needed to produce the cross-tabulated format.

https://v8doc.sas.com/sashtml/lrcon/z0961108.htm

In SAS, the automatic variable _N_ represents the number of times the DATA step has iterated. It starts at 1 and increments by 1 each time the DATA step loops back to the top. This variable can be used within the DATA step to monitor the iteration count but is not written to the output data set. The other options, A, C, and D, are not automatically created variables that track iterations in the DATA step.

References:

• SAS documentation on automatic variables.

The correct syntax for the LIBNAME statement in SAS, which assigns a libref to a library stored at a specific path, requires the libref to come first, followed by the path enclosed in quotes. The format is libname libref 'path';. Thus, the correct syntax among the options provided is Option B: libname mydata 'c:\sas\data';. This statement assigns the libref 'mydata' to the directory 'c:\sas\data'. The other options either invert the order of the libref and path or improperly use the equals sign, which is not standard syntax for the LIBNAME statement.

References:SAS documentation on the LIBNAME statement, SAS Institute.

The correct statement to import a CSV file into SAS and create a dataset is option B. The PROC IMPORT statement is used in SAS to read data from external files and create a SAS data set. Let's break down why option B is correct:

• datafile= specifies the location and filename of the external data file. In this case, "sales.csv" is the correct filename and format for a CSV file.
• dbms=csv tells SAS that the format of the external data file is CSV (comma-separated values).
• out=mydata.sales; specifies the name of the output SAS dataset. It consists of two parts: the libref mydata and the dataset name sales. This tells SAS to store the new dataset in a library called mydata with the dataset name sales.

Option A uses an incorrect syntax as it incorrectly specifies the data= option, which is not valid in this context. Also, the out= option is incorrectly quoted and terminated with a semicolon within the quotes.

Option C has a typo in the out= option (out=mydata.gales;), which incorrectly specifies the output dataset name. Additionally, it incorrectly specifies the data= option, which should actually be datafile=.

Option D has incorrectly quoted the out= option and uses a hyphen instead of an equals sign. Additionally, it does not use quotes around the filename, which may cause issues if the filename contains special characters or spaces.

References:SAS 9.4 documentation, specifically the PROC IMPORT statement: SAS Help Center: PROC IMPORT Statement

The correct answer is B. The set statement in SAS can concatenate multiple datasets together. The AMERICAN and NATIONAL datasets appear to have the same structure and variables, so the set statement without any options will combine them into one dataset called BASEBALL. The order of the datasets in the set statement determines the order of the observations in the output dataset, and since there is no variable that needs renaming to match between the two datasets, option B is the correct answer.

References:

• SAS documentation on the set statement.

The correct syntax for a conditional if-then block in SAS that includes a do group for executing multiple statements is:

if condition then do;

statement1;

statement2;

end;

In Option B, the syntax if age<13 then do; opens a do group, and age_Cat='Pre-teen'; and account='No Social Media'; are the two statements inside the do group, followed by an end; statement to close the group. However, there is a typo with the use of dashes instead of equal signs for assignment in the variable statements which seems to be an error, so technically, none of the provided options has the correct syntax without an error. The correct syntax should use equal signs (=) for assignment within the do group:

if age<13 then do;

age_Cat='Pre-teen';

account='No Social Media Allowed';

end;

References:

• SAS documentation on conditional processing with IF-THEN/ELSE statements, SAS Institute.

In the given statement, BirthDate = 15DEC2005’d;, the 'd' denotes a SAS date constant, which is a numeric value representing a specific date. SAS date values are stored as numeric variables counting the number of days from January 1, 1960. Therefore, BirthDate is a numeric variable, making option B correct. This constant does not represent a character string (eliminating A), and the byte size of any numeric variable in SAS is 8 by default, not 9 (eliminating C). There is no syntax error in the statement (eliminating D).

References:

• SAS documentation on dates, times, and datetime values, SAS Institute.

The correct answer is C. The DATA step and PROC PRINT steps ran without errors. In the SAS log shown, there is a clear error in the PROC SORT step because of the use of an incorrect option by ascending Increase which caused the "Variable ASCENDING not found" error. However, the DATA step completed successfully, as indicated by the "NOTE" that follows it, confirming that 56 observations were read from the SASHELP.SHOES data set where Region is Africa. Additionally, the PROC PRINT step also completed successfully, indicated by the "NOTE" at the bottom of the log which confirms that 56 observations were read from the WORK.AFRICA data set, implying the PROC PRINT step executed without issue.

A is incorrect because the error in PROC SORT did not cause the program to stop; SAS continued processing the next steps. B is incorrect because the PROC SORT step did not run successfully. D is incorrect because the PROC PRINT step did not fail; it ran successfully.

References:

• SAS documentation on error messages.
• Understanding the SAS log and error messages.

The PROC PRINT statement is used for printing SAS datasets. To customize the column headers in the report, you use the label statement within the PROC PRINT procedure to assign new labels to variables, and the label option in the PROC PRINT to activate these labels. The noobs option suppresses the printing of observation numbers in the report.

Option B has the correct syntax for what is being requested:

• proc print data=cities label noobs; specifies the dataset to print with the label option to display variable labels and noobs to hide the observation numbers.
• label Name='Employee Name' City='Birth City'; assigns the label 'Employee Name' to the 'Name' variable and 'Birth City' to the 'City' variable.
• run; signifies the end of the PROC PRINT procedure.

Options A, C, and D are incorrect due to syntax errors:

• A uses an incorrect option showlabelse instead of label and noobs.
• C is incorrect because it lacks the label option in the proc print statement which is necessary to actually display the labels, and the labels are being incorrectly used within the proc print instead of in a label statement.
• D has several issues: there is no display statement in SAS, the option noobs should be outside of the proc print statement, and the labels should be defined in a label statement, not within proc print.

References:

• SAS 9.4 documentation for the PROC PRINT statement: SAS Help Center: PROC PRINT

The PROC SORT step in SAS is used to sort data sets by one or more variables. The syntax for the proc sort step requires the by statement to specify the variable(s) by which to sort the data. The correct answer is option A:

proc sort data=Names;

by Name;

run;

This sorts the data set by the variable 'Name' in alphabetical order, which matches the sorted NAMES data set shown in the question. Option B uses orderby, which is not a valid SAS statement. Option C sorts by 'Age', which would not give the same result as shown in the question. Option D also incorrectly uses orderby.

In the context of the PROC MEANS procedure in SAS, the CLASS statement is used to specify categorical variables whose unique values group the data before calculating statistics. This allows PROC MEANS to calculate statistics like the mean, sum, or standard deviation for each class or group of data defined by the CLASS variables.

The CLASS statement works as follows:

• class variable-list; specifies one or more variables to define groups for analysis.
• When used, PROC MEANS computes the requested statistics for each level of the variables listed, which can be very helpful for analyzing how groups compare across different statistics.

The other options are not used in the PROC MEANS procedure to specify grouping of data:

• B. GROUP is not a valid statement in PROC MEANS.
• C. SUMBY is not a valid statement in SAS.
• D. VAR is used in PROC MEANS to specify the analysis variables for which statistics are to be computed, not to group the data.

Option C is correct. The set statement is used within a DATA step to read an existing SAS data set. In this case, set sashelp.shoes; reads the SASHELP.SHOES data set, and data work.total; specifies the creation of a new data set named TOTAL in the WORK library. The options A, B, and D are incorrect because they either use the wrong syntax or are not proper statements for reading an input data set and creating an output data set.

References:

• SAS 9.4 documentation on the DATA step.

To create SAS date values, the correct syntax involves specifying the date in a string format followed by the letter 'd'. This indicates to SAS that the string should be interpreted as a date value. Therefore, the correct answers are:

• A. "10/19/2019"d - This format directly specifies the month, day, and year, enclosed in quotes followed by 'd', which SAS correctly interprets as a date value.
• C. "19Oct2019"d - This format uses a three-letter abbreviation for the month combined with the day and year, also followed by 'd'. This is another valid way to specify a date in SAS.

Option B, mdy(10, 19, 2019), is incorrect because while the MDY function does create date values from month, day, and year components, the function itself should be used within a DATA step or another context where SAS functions are evaluated, and it doesn't directly create a date literal in the same way as options A and C.

Option D, mdy(19, Oct, 2019), is syntactically incorrect because the MDY function expects numeric arguments for the month, day, and year, and "Oct" as a literal month name is not a valid numeric argument.

References: SAS 9.4 Language Reference: Concepts.

In the DATA step provided, average is calculated using the mean function, which calculates the average of the non-missing values of the variables listed. The variables provided are:

• var1 = 2
• var2 = 4
• var3 = .
• var4 = 6

The mean function in SAS ignores missing values, represented by a period (.). Hence, the average is computed using the non-missing values (2, 4, and 6). The mean of these three numbers is calculated as: (2 + 4 + 6) / 3 = 12 / 3 = 4

Therefore, the value of average is 4.

References:

• SAS documentation on the MEAN function, SAS Institute.

When using a BY statement in a DATA step, SAS creates two temporary variables for each BY variable: FIRST.variable and LAST.variable. These are used to indicate the beginning and end of each BY group.

For Ellen's observation:

• First.State=1 because this is the first occurrence of the state "OH" in the dataset when sorted by the state variable, which makes it the beginning of a new group for "OH".
• Last.State=0 because Ellen is not the last observation

for the state "OH" group. In the given dataset snippet, there appears to be only one observation for the state "OH", but since the data is sorted by state, and we don't see another "OH" below Ellen, we can deduce that Ellen's observation is not the last "OH" observation in the entire dataset. If there were no more "OH" observations following Ellen's, then Last.State would be 1.

The FIRST.variable is set to 1 for the first observation in each BY group and 0 for all other observations in the group. Conversely, LAST.variable is set to 1 for the last observation in each BY group and 0 otherwise. Since we're assuming that the dataset is larger than the snippet shown, and the data continues beyond what is visible, we must assume there are more observations for "OH" unless indicated otherwise.

References

• "SAS 9.4 Language Reference: Concepts." SAS Institute Inc.
• "BY-Group Processing" in "SAS Programming 1: Essentials" course material, SAS Institute.

Option B is correct. The DATE9. format in SAS displays dates in the ddMMMyyyy format, which corresponds to the example given (25JUN2019). This format writes dates with a two-digit day, a three-character month abbreviation, and a four-digit year. The other options do not match the correct format:

• A is incorrect because ddMMMyy9. format would display a two-digit year.
• C is incorrect because there is no such format as Ddmmmyyyy9. in standard SAS formats.
• D is incorrect because Dmy9. does not correspond to the required format.

References:

• SAS 9.4 documentation on date and time formats.

The correct syntax for the CONTENTS procedure is to specify the dataset to be described using the data= option. The dataset should be identified by its library and name, separated by a period. The correct syntax is therefore Proc contents data=library.dataset;, which makes Option C the correct answer: Proc contents data=sashelp.shoes;. This statement will produce the contents of the dataset 'shoes' in the 'sashelp' library.

References:

• SAS documentation on the CONTENTS procedure, SAS Institute.

In SAS, datasets can be either temporary or permanent, depending on the library where they are stored. Temporary datasets are stored in the Work library and are deleted at the end of the session, while permanent datasets reside in user-defined libraries or in libraries that refer to a more persistent storage location.

For this question:

• B. Mylib.new: This is a permanent dataset. The prefix 'Mylib' suggests it is stored in a user-defined library (not the temporary 'Work' library), implying that the data persists beyond the current session unless explicitly deleted or if the library's link to the storage location is removed.
• D. Temp.new: Despite the potentially misleading name 'Temp', if this dataset is not explicitly stored in the Work library, it could indeed be permanent. The permanence of a dataset is determined by its library reference, not by its name. If 'Temp' is a user-defined library linked to a persistent storage, then 'Temp.new' is also permanent.

C. Work.new: This dataset is explicitly temporary as it is stored in the Work library, which is cleared at the end of the SAS session.

A. New: Without additional context about the library, 'New' does not provide enough information to determine its permanence. It could be either temporary or permanent depending on the library it references.

References:SAS documentation on libraries and dataset management, SAS Institute.

The type of error that does not produce expected results and does not generate errors or warnings in the log is a logic error. Logic errors occur when there is a flaw in the program's logic, which causes it to operate incorrectly, but the syntax is correct so it does not produce any error or warning messages. Unlike syntax errors which are mistakes in the program's code that prevent it from compiling or running, logic errors are more insidious because the program still runs but yields incorrect results. For example, a programmer may accidentally code an incorrect formula or use a wrong variable name that still exists, so the program runs but produces incorrect output.

References:

• SAS documentation on error types.