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Who is Miss SAS Answers?

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Dear Miss SAS Answers,

I have several questions for you:

Who are you really? What’s up with the Miss SAS Answers character, anyway? Will you answer all of my SAS questions?

Signed,
Curious

The answer to that last question is, "Well, maybe. I know there's one I won't answer for sure, and that one is, ‘How old are you?’” As for the others…

I’m Linda Jolley, a SAS Instructor based in the Kansas City MO area. From 1980 to 1997, I was employed as a SAS programmer in various industries in the Southeast US, so I have lots of experience with programming in SAS. I also did some training of other programmers in SAS coding and some proselytizing about SAS software. While this wasn’t what I was going to be when I grew up (I was an English major in college), SAS (the software) has paid a lot of bills for me over the years by providing opportunities for employment, no matter where I lived. As my husband told me when I first started programming in SAS, “Stay with it! You’ll find you really, really like it.” He was right!

I’ve been a SAS instructor since 1997. I’m Base and Advanced SAS Programming certified and working on the Data Integration Developer certification. This is my dream job. I get to travel all over and teach folks how to use SAS software. What could be better (at least for me)?

Miss SAS Answers was “born” back in 2006. Jane Stroupe and I were searching for a clever idea for a SAS® Global Forum paper. The SAS® Global Forum 2007 conference was being held in Orlando FL at Walt Disney World, and we really wanted to attend!

What we finally settled on was a fictitious advice columnist named “Miss SAS Answers”. SAS users could send in their Base SAS coding questions, and Miss SAS Answers would provide short, snappy answers. The rest, as they say, is history:

• SAS® Global Forum 2007: A Guide to SAS® Efficiency

• SAS® Global Forum 2009: A Guide to Efficient PROC SQL Coding

• SAS® Global Forum 2010: A Guide to Sorting Your Data

While we’ve skipped a few years, the Miss SAS Answers papers have been very well attended and are in high demand for Regional and Local SAS User Group meetings.

I’ve been asked to translate this character to the SAS Training blogosphere. Miss SAS Answers will take one question per blog and look at one (or more) ways to solve the problem. While she will concentrate on Foundation (Base) SAS, she is not limited to that domain.

Disclaimer: Miss SAS Answers is not intended to be a substitute for SAS Technical Support or for the SAS support web site. She is intended to be a fun way to answer a specific question or solve a specific problem.

Stay tuned for the first Miss SAS Answers Q & A blog! If you have a question about SAS coding or other SAS topics, let us know by posting your question in the comments section below.

In the meantime, happy SAS programming!

-Miss SAS Answers

Tags miss sas answers programming efficiency
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Miss SAS Answers

Technical Training Specialist

Linda Jolley has been a SAS software user since 1980. She has been an instructor for SAS since 1997, and is Base and Advanced SAS Programming certified and working on the Data Integration Developer certification. She has presented papers at several SAS user group venues on various SAS programming efficiency techniques and the SAS Scalable Performance Data Server.

8 Comments

  1. Nikos on

    Dear Miss SAS,

    I would very much appreciate if you could help me with the following:

    I have a Data Set as follows:

    IDCost1Cost2Cost3TRNS_Next_MinTrnsNo_QTRLAGNEWTRNS
    124515003002002007Q 22008Q 352007Q 2
    24515003002002007Q 22008Q 352007Q 3
    24515003002002007Q 22008Q 352007Q 4
    24515003002002007Q 22008Q 352008Q 1
    24515003002002007Q 22008Q 352008Q 2
    24512001301202008Q 32009Q 122008Q 3
    24512001301202008Q 32009Q 122008Q 4
    24511003003502009Q 12009Q 112009Q 1
    234444070802010Q 22010Q 422010Q 2
    34444070802010Q 22010Q 422010Q 3
    34445046892010Q 42010Q 412010Q 4
    377737090702007Q 22007Q 422007Q 2
    77737090702007Q 22007Q 422007Q 3
    77739835702007Q 42009Q 152007Q 4
    77739835702007Q 42009Q 152008Q 1
    77739835702007Q 42009Q 152008Q 2
    77739835702007Q 42009Q 152008Q 3
    77739835702007Q 42009Q 152008Q 4
    777312090802009Q 12010Q 252009Q 1
    777312090802009Q 12010Q 252009Q 2
    777312090802009Q 12010Q 252009Q 3
    777312090802009Q 12010Q 252009Q 4
    777312090802009Q 12010Q 252010Q 1
    7773170190702010Q 22010Q 212010Q 2
    488992002002002008Q 32009Q 122008Q 3
    88992002002002008Q 32009Q 122008Q 4
    88991001001002009Q 12009Q 112009Q 1

    For each BY Group (ID & TRNS_) I need to create the LAGNEWTRNS variable that will present the TRNS_ dates rolling down incremented by 1 QTR for each observation until they reach the next BY GROUP first QTR (as shown on the table).

    I would like to thank you in advance.

    Kind regards

    Nikos

  2. Pingback: A quick tour of SAS operators - The SAS Training Post

  5. Shailesh Patil on

    Thank you to Miss SAS. Her answer did help help me to get the solution.

  7. charu on

    A very warm welcome to you Miss SAS Answers, looking forward to all your posts!

  8. Shailesh Patil on

    I have a problem in getting a Output Delivery System (ODS) such as PDF, HTML and RTF using the base sas 9.2 software. It asks me to connect to remote browser. On trying that, I have a connection failure. Can you please help me?

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