Rating: 
Summary: SAS APPEAL
Review:
SAS APPEAL
One of the best introductions to SAS, the "little purple book" is now in its 3rd edition (November 2003; ISBN: = 1590473337). Compared with the previous version (this one)," the 3rd edition includes more information on preparing reports and tables, and exporting data. However, the basic format and organization is the same.
This book is organized into 8 chapters, with six appendices, and an index. The overall organization is clear-- one topic leads clearly to the next (contrast this with the overly concise "Getting Started with the SQL Procedure," also by SAS). The book clearly assumes no previous SAS knowledge, although covering operating systems (e.g., Windows, your local workstation or mainframe) is beyond the book's scope. Previous experience with any data entry, data management, or programming will be very helpful, but is not essential. Each chapter is organized into two-page topics (these range from 7 topics in the MACRO chapter to 20 in the overly long data entry chapter) with introductory paragraphs, examples that include a small data set, and programming related to the topic. Programming language related to the new topic is shaded to distinguish it from material already covered or otherwise irrelevant. Because of the mini-data sets for each topic, you don't have to keep returning to datasets presented at the beginning only (as you do with some introductory texts). The reason for using the language, the data, the example, and the output are all there on the 2 facing pages; it's very easy to use.
In 217 well-written pages, the book advances from the very introductory (e.g., every SAS line ends with a semicolon; think of columns as variables, and rows as observations) to techniques (e.g., the chapter on MACROS) and programming "tricks" useful to those with years of experience (the too-brief chapter on debugging programs, the section on the always difficult MERGE statement). This is the challenge of an introductory book: It needs to teach the basics, but not so basic that one can finish the entire book in a couple of hours. Delwiche and Slaughter handle this task superbly. Chapter 1, for example, explains basic SAS concepts (the database, the data step, procedures, viewing and printing output), and a few pages on SAS for Windows. (The authors occasionally refer to SAS for Windows ("PC SAS"); this is valuable for those who have this software but otherwise extraneous.) Still, after nearly 15 years of SAS experience, I turn to this book when I want a concise yet easily understood explanation of something I may have not used for awhile. After mastering this book, I recommend that users follow it with the somewhat more advanced "SAS Programming for Researchers and Social Scientists" (Paul Spector) and/or "Cody's Data Cleaning Techniques (Ron Cody).
Chapters are as follows (I've added a sample topic in parentheses after each chapter title):
1. Getting Started Using SAS Software ("The Two Parts of a SAS Program")
2. Getting Your Data into the SAS System ("Reading Raw Data...")
3. Working with Your Data ("Subsetting Your Data")
4. Sorting, Printing, and Summarizing Your Data ("Summarizing Your Rata with PROC MEANS")
5. Modifying and Combining SAS Data Sets (Combining Data Sets Using a One-to-Many Match Merge")
6. Writing Flexible Code with the SAS Macro Facility ("Macro Concepts")
7. Using Basic Statistical Procedures ("Using PROC REG for Simple Regression Analysis")
8. Debugging Your SAS Programs ("DATA Step Produces Wrong Results but No Error Message")
The book's main problem is Chapter 2. The lengthy material on inputting data will be irrelevant for most students, as datasets are often already prepared. Still, because one may sometimes need to create a dataset, the chapter is useful. In addition, chapter 8, doesn't contain include enough on error detection and debugging programs, an extremely important SAS skill that helps one detect and distinguish programming and dataset errors. Also the Appendix on resources, "Where to Go from Here," mentions SAS Institute published books only, although this is partly due to the paucity of well written SAS books by independent authors when the second edition came out in 1998 (compared with today). Overall, while this much-loved book is much loved by those who took their first SAS steps with it. I recommend the new edition (3rd) edition; it has more topics and is more current, for only slightly more money.
Rating:
Summary: Type, paste, click: which one do you want?
Review: I had friends who, 3 or 4 years ago, got into IT world by getting Oracle DBA certificates or MCSE fast. Their salaries were higher than mine as a database marketing statistician back then. Now many of them no longer have as strong market demand for their skills and experience. Some are trying to switch to so-called data mining fields. So they are coming to me to again seek fast track on how to master SAS, quickly.
I told them it took me 14 years to get to my curent level of using sas on mainframe, unix (now including linux) and Windows. I ask them how many OSs they are expert with running, say, their SQL servers. Apparently MS SQL server only runs on Windows? So my friends are having hard time even thinking of going back to big iron or Unix, although the big iron has been relatively more friendly to use overtime.
To help them feel better, I recommend this Little SAS Book to them. I told them the gist of the SAS software is quite independent of OS. To master SAS is much like to master some kind of KongFu. It may look simple. It is not. It may look boring or backward. It is not. If you feel I am talking like a Taoist, you are getting it.
This book, by the way,is not a good candidate for a pillow book, although its cover may give you a very soft look (should software books all have a 'soft' look?) and it looks no way near a tome. My point is you need to use the software with the book.
Good luck. Read the book several times to begin with. Every time you will see something different.
Rating: 
Summary: For absolute beginners
Review: I own almost every introductory book on SAS in print, and this one is used the least. The most use it gets is when someone who has absolutely no experience with SAS comes to me for help - then I can loan this book. It is very easy to read and assumes no knowledge of SAS. It has a few tips that are hard to find in other books at this level, but otherwise falls short. What you will find here is a tutorial on the basics of the SAS/Base package, how to read in data, and a few basic procedures. It covers this material well, but it is not enough unless you are taking a course and have another resource such as lecture notes to do anything really useful. It does not really cover SAS/Stat. I have used the book as the text in a course I taught, as supplementary to my lecture notes. If I taught the same course again, I would choose a different book, such as Cody. The Little SAS Book is a nice book to get started, but will not be the only book you need.
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Summary: I love this book so much that I would ...
Review: 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!
Rating: 
Summary: compact and useful
Review: I started learning SAS with this book some time ago and I found it very clear and helpful. The book is organized with short (2-3 pages long) topics about each command (like freq, print,...) or each operation you want to do with SAS (like merging, updating, ...). Every topic starts with an introduction, a syntax and an example. I specially found the examples very helpful.
The book also covers a chapter about macros, that are powerful programming tool in SAS. It gives a simple and to-the-point description of macro tools.
I think a really nice thing about this book is that topics and explanantions are brief yet complete. The book avoids getting into pages of description about one thing. This makes the book a useful reference, even after you have learned SAS.
However, the book is not a complete guide to SAS and misses some advanced discussions and topics (the book actually doesn't claim it is a complete guide in its introduction so I am not blaming them).
In general I recommend this book to both beginners and more experienced users, and it works great along with SAS online tutorial and help.
Rating: 
Summary: Do NOT buy this book!!
Review: I think anyone who wants to get into SAS programming should own this book! I've been programming for about 2 years now and still refer back to this book on occasion. The amount of knowledge packed into this little book (thus the title "The Little SAS Book") is invaluable, especially for a beginner. This was the book that allowed me to pin down some of the mvp's (Most valuable procs) of the language.
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Summary: Totally Awful - Do not purchase!
Review: In both my undergraduate and graduate university career, I would rarely sell my old textbooks after I had completed a class. I usually beleived that I would need to refer back to the text if I wanted to apply what I learned in class at a later date. This book was the one notable exception. It was sold the day the class that required it ended. It is too simplistic and too full of fluff to be at all useful. It may provide someone with enough information to complete a project/assignement for a very basic class, but is not advanced enough to be useful to someone in a real world situation. In fact, if the authors were a little more efficent all the material in the book could be covered in about 10 pages. As an alternative, I would recommend SAS Programming by Example by Cody and Pass. That book assumes no previous knowledge of SAS and is appropriate for beginners. However, it has a lot more substance than The Little SAS Book. Also, such a "little" book is not worth $30. Unfortunately, SAS has always charged top dollar for its products and most of the books about SAS are expensive as well.
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Summary: Great Intro to SAS
Review: 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.
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Summary: Quick reference book & beginner's guide
Review: This book works with all versions of SAS and I found it a useful reference. It explains to you how to enter and manipulate your datasets in SAS. Also brief description of PROCs and options with each PROC. Each topic is in a separate page and all contained in about 2 pages at the most. So do not expect so much details on these procedure but if you happened to forget a syntax line, grab this book's index and the reminder is there for you. I recommend it to all SAS users.
Rating:
Summary: A must have for beginners
Review: This is a must have for beginners. I work in a firm where even the experts refer to this book from time to time. This book is not intended to explore advanced topics for the advanced user, but I promise that it will provide a great foundation for new users
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