Value of SAS

Students taking a break before guest lecture.

As a trainer for SAS Education Australia and chairperson of the local SAS User Group, QUEST (Queensland Users Exploring SAS Technology) , I meet many new SAS users over the years. In July 2011, I met Kim MacKenzie, a lecturer at Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Brisbane, Australia at an Enterprise Guide for Educators workshop that the SAS Australia & New Zealand Academic Program team organized, and a few months ago, Kim attended a SAS Programming 1 course that I taught. Kim teaches a Forensic and Business Intelligence using SAS technologies class to undergraduates at QUT, and asked me whether I would be interested in being a guest lecturer mid-semester.

I was honored by the invitation and enjoyed putting together a presentation titled the Value of SAS. It was about the value in learning SAS as a skill and the value that SAS Software offers in the products and solutions to organizations around the world. In my presentation, I spoke about my own experiences in learning SAS at university and the skills, projects and opportunities it has provided me over the years. I also referenced the recent findings that SAS skills will be the #1 job skill for a bigger paycheck, which seemed to raise some interest from the audience.

The Forensic and Business Intelligence class assists students in analyzing large data sources and reporting their findings to assist managerial decision making. This unit provides students with theoretical and practical skills in forensic and business intelligence through the use of SAS Software and other technologies, to investigate business related data resources to identify fraud, and to support corporate performance and decision making.

In the guest lecture, I discussed some of the projects that I had worked on over the years and how SAS solves real-world problems like combatting fraud through the combined strengths of SAS solutions and technologies, highlighting the value of SAS to businesses in making fact-based decisions. I also spoke about the SAS Work Placement Program, a unique initiative linking SAS customers with SAS skilled students in Australia and New Zealand and encouraged the audience to come along to our next QUEST meeting to learn more from Geordie Tait, SAS Academic Program Coordinator who will be presenting on the program 30 August 2012. I also told them that there will be many SAS users there who might also help them with their assignments.

At the end of the lecture, attentive students were rewarded with SAS giveaways and left knowing about the Value of SAS to students today, tomorrow and in the future…

I’d be keen to hear your own experiences with the Value of SAS. Please leave your comments below.

Value of SAS was published on SAS Users.