Date: Mon, 14 Jun 2010 13:41:37 -0400
Reply-To: Joe Whitehurst <joewhitehurst@GMAIL.COM>
Sender: "SAS(r) Discussion" <SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From: Joe Whitehurst <joewhitehurst@GMAIL.COM>
Subject: Re: Skill Sets needed to be considered a SAS programmer
In-Reply-To: <20100614101915.247D85A6@resin13.mta.everyone.net>
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Well said Mary.
On Mon, Jun 14, 2010 at 1:19 PM, Mary <mlhoward@avalon.net> wrote:
> If you are interested in becoming a SAS programmer in a research setting,
> first perhaps focus on an area of interest:
>
> a) Health Care Data Analyst
> b) Education Data Analyst
> c) Financial Analyst
>
> These all have in common that they tend to use very large databases, so
> becoming confident in data step merging, aggregating, and transposing data,
> as well as SQL programming such as "group by", is an essential skill for all
> of them.
>
>
> You'll also want to get good at the "field" you have chosen- such as for a
> Health Care Data Analyst you might want to learn about diagnosis and cpt
> coding structures like ICD-9.
>
> If you want to go in a research direction, then having strong statistical
> skills is a must- you could perhaps think about a Masters degree, such as
> Biostatistics for the Health Care direction, Educational Measurement and
> Statistics for Education, and traditional statistics or Business statistics
> for the Financial Analyst.
>
> You'd also want to get really good at SAS in SAS/STAT; I look the "Live
> Web" courses offered by SAS Institute in : a) Categorical/Logisitic
> Regression b) Survival analysis using the Proportional Hazards Model c)
> Longitudinal Data Analysis d) Mixed Models Analysis e) Multivariate Analyis,
> and e) Statistics II- Anova and Regression. Finish all of those and you'll
> have a good foundation! And even if you can't get someone to pay for you-
> think about it as investing in your future; you can get a 50% discount if
> you are a student or employed at a university.
>
> Also think about getting some experience- if you can't find a research
> position right away, consider a Help Desk position supporting SAS where you
> will work with researchers and learn a bit more about what they do.
>
> You can often buy the books to the SAS Institute courses- that might be a
> way to review the material needed, though most people need to take actual
> courses to really learn, and a potential employer is going to look for
> actual courses taken and experience prior to hiring you.
>
> Being a SAS Programmer is a lifelong effort-SAS has so many parts it is
> impossible to get to the end of learning it all, so if you view yourself as
> a lifelong learner who constructively improves every year then eventually
> the jobs you get will reflect that.
>
> -Mary
>
> --- starsoul@MINDSPRING.COM wrote:
>
> From: Lizette Koehler <starsoul@MINDSPRING.COM>
> To: SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject: Skill Sets needed to be considered a SAS programmer
> Date: Sat, 12 Jun 2010 08:36:12 -0400
>
> I was just wondering how you know when your skills are sufficient in SAS to
> be classified as a SAS programmer?
>
>
>
> I have been doing SAS off and on for over 10 years. So I can code it, but
> I
> am not strong in some areas like MACRO or SQL SAS.
>
>
>
> How would I judge that I could take on a job function that requires a SAS
> programmer? Is there a skill set cheat sheet? Or something I could use to
> gage my level of SAS coding with job requirements out there?
>
>
>
> I would love to go more into a research type function that would allow me
> to
> ask questions of raw data and produce valid analysis of it.
>
>
> However, I am not sure how much more training I need to do in SAS before I
> could be considered for some of those types of jobs.
>
>
>
> Also, would that require Programming Life Cycle knowledge as well? If so,
> what should be I learning in that area.
>
>
>
> Thanks.
>
>
>
> Lizette
>
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