Walking to work this sign caught my eye. I was moved as I’m sure you will be too – to see the lot of students universally.
Like most folks, I’ve played different roles in life. Of them I would say that my part-time student role was the most challenging. My daily routine would come as no surprise to any student: wake up at 5:00, get lunch ready, take a bus and then a train to school, intense class 9:00 - noon, head back, work from 1:00-9:00, return home, prepare dinner, eat, finish my daily assignments, manage my relationships and collapse on my bed by 1:00 am. Whew! Makes me tired, just writing about it.
Consider the exact same challenges students today face. Juggling multiple roles: school schedule, a job to pay their bills, managing their personal lives, etc. While it does prepare them for the real world, it also puts a huge onus on them to sometimes work 4-8 hour days to pay for their school tuition. And this is outside of their regular day. Isn’t this phase of life an important time to apply learning to assignments? How much time does a student have to finish assignments? Do they have funds to support their schooling? Does this seem - a little unfair?
How can SAS support students?
Learning has been an ongoing mandate for SAS CEO Dr. Jim Goodnight who started out in agriculture at North Carolina State University. His mission is about helping students achieve academic excellence. In fact, he recently announced that SAS OnDemand for Academics software will be available at no cost for higher education researchers. Even SAS corporate headquarters at Cary has a distinctly academic feel. We recognize the challenges professors, research fellows/ associates and graduate students face in finding time for your own training. Let alone pay the full prices and potential travel costs to attend courses. The SAS Summer School that I want to tell you about is an offshoot of the SAS passion for education.
Canadian winters are long and make summer welcome already. Why else should I love summer other than the weather?
Here are 6 simple reasons for you to love summer in Canada other than the weather:
• SAS Summer School - You pick SAS content that your school wants to learn: SAS or Enterprise Guide, or Enterprise Miner-the list is endless.
• University location - You tell us where you are and we’ll come to you and NO, we don’t charge you for our travel expenses.
• Money savings - Significant discount off public pricing to help you take that SAS training you’ve always dreamed about at affordable pricing.
• Months of July and August - available during the summer months of July and August.
• Exclusive to student population-You are a student, faculty or university administrative staff and can round up 18 students.
• Runs for 3.5 days.
I’d like to end with a handy tip Roberto Gil sent me on the SAS Canada community page to store the number of observations in a macro variable to reuse.
This is the kind of SAS knowledge you can expect to learn in summer school. I’m sure you want no further convincing about the benefits of SAS Summer School. For more, check this link or write to me if you’d like to make SAS Summer School happen at your location.
5 Comments
And we're having a terrific summer too Patty. glad you found this useful.. Yes, summer school does take everyone by surprise with its unbelievable savings & limitless possibilities!!
Thank you so much for this article. I was surprised to know that SAS Summer School offers better options to people like me who is more than a multitasker. Really enough reasons to enjoy Canada every summer.
This approach requires a data step and still can leave the reader wondering. A simpler approach is simply a direct assignment like:
%let count3 = %Nobs( sashelp.class );
This requires a macro (preferably in the autocall path) similar to this:
/******************************************************************** Name: nobs Desc: Returns the number of observations in a SAS dataset Type: Macro Function - Dataset Info Arguments: 1st Name of SAS dataset. Results: The %nobs macro is designed to be called as a macro function and returns the number of observations. Example: %let nobs = %nobs(datalib.mydata); 3/26/99 Walt Smith *
*********************************************************************/
%macro nobs (dsn) /
des = 'Fn: Return nbr of obs in a dataset'
;
%local nobs dsid rc;
%let nobs=0;
%let dsid = %sysfunc(open(&dsn));
%if &dsid %then
%do;
%let nobs = %sysfunc(attrn(&dsid,NOBS));
%end;
%else
%put Open for dataset &dsn failed - %sysfunc(sysmsg());
%let rc = %sysfunc(close(&dsid));
&nobs
%mend nobs;
Great tip Harry. Lesser functions mean better performance & more efficiency. Thanks for taking the time to comment.
Or, using symputX results in less typing:
call symputx('count3',count);
Implicit put, left and trim.