Christine and I took the opportunity to slack off from our certification studying and blogging during SAS Global Forum. Not that we were actually in Seattle for the conference. But we used the relatively quiet time that resulted from nearly everyone being out of the office to catch up on our workouts “regular” work. Now that everyone has settled into their post-Global Forum routines, we are back on schedule.
Last week we covered chapter 11, “Creating and Managing Variables.” (And, I might add, after completing this chapter, we are almost exactly halfway through the certification guide! Hooray!) This chapter covered, to my mind, an inordinate amount of material to remember—which, of course, means that I will forget most of it by the time I get to chapter 12.
But after doing the exercises on the CD and going through the chapter, I did manage to score 80% on the quiz. As usual, the ones I missed were quite tricky. I submit this one as an example:
6. For the observation shown below, what is the result of the IF-THEN statement?
- Count =12 Control =Go
- Count =13 Control =Stop
- Count =12 Control =Stop
- Count =13 Control =Go
I chose b. Of course I was wrong. Why? Because, as an English major and long-time editor, I obviously forgot what the use of quotes signifies. The case has to match, and the observation is lowercase “ok” and the code reads uppercase “OK.” Would this generate an error message? Or would I kill a whole bunch of people if I were working on a drug study?
One last thing about this chapter. Both Christine and I were perplexed by the table on page 305, which lists examples of the default type and length that SAS assigns when the type and length of a variable are not explicitly set. Why would a character value be 4 by default? Why isn’t the default length the length of the first value mentioned? This seems to contradict what is taught throughout the chapter. I’m sure someone out there knows—probably everyone, in fact.
Last, I just want to say how much I enjoyed reading Michael Harvey’s last couple of posts on technical writing. In fact, not to pat ourselves on the back, but the diversity of voices on Open Mic makes it one of the more interesting blogs to read. You never know who’ll be writing next! Except, of course, your trusty PROC CERTIFY; martyrs. Until next time . . .
