SAS training: 5 free sessions technologists love

Data scientists are in short supply. McKinsey found the U.S. labor market alone is short of 190,000 data scientists, and demand is growing. According to the World Data Science Initiative, "the data science market size is expected to grow from USD 95.3.9 billion in 2021 to USD 322.9 billion by 2026.”

To help equip more data scientists to be ready for the world ahead, SAS created SAS Explore.

Created by technologists for technologists, SAS Explore has more than 100 free SAS training sessions. Data scientists, programmers, and analytics enthusiasts tuned in globally for our inaugural event.

Thanks to the high interest, these SAS training courses are available to the public at no cost. Now, data scientists (and aspiring data scientists) can learn for free on demand.

With so many sessions, choosing only a few to highlight is hard. This article found the top five technical sessions according to audience rankings. Keep reading to see what you can learn with SAS Explore!

#1: Creating reports again and again with macro

You know you can create a flexible report with SAS using macro variables, but what about when it comes to multiple reports? What about sending the report to Microsoft Excel? This presentation focuses on using %if/%then logic and %do loops to enable you to create multiple excel reports. The macro definitions that create the reports are flexible, customizable, and, best of all, able to run repeatedly without needing to manually change anything!

In this session, you’ll learn how to create reports with Macro, define the ‘underperform’ value, export to excel, add parameters, excel ODS options and more.

What attendees had to say about this session:

“Everything was helpful. Thank you so much!”

“Walking through all the code is something I value highly. There are many resources available online for SAS, but nothing beats someone explaining all the different code options.”

“In this session, I learned about non-positional in macros. Didn't know that you could set defaults like that. I will be using that in my coding. Also, more in-depth usage of %if %then %else macros that weren't in the Coursera SAS training.”

“This is easily actionable content that will make a real difference to my coding efficiency.”

Watch the full training session for free now on YouTube:

#2: Using Python for data analytics in SAS® Viya®

Unite the Python language with the analytic power of SAS. In this presentation, you’ll learn how to use the SWAT (SAS wrapper for analytics transfer) package to take advantage of the SAS Cloud Analytic Services (CAS) engine in SAS Viya for massively parallel processing (MPP).

This training begins with a quick overview of SAS Viya and the CAS engine. Then it discusses how to leverage the strengths of the CAS engine and your local Python client, connect Python to CAS, and access and load data into CAS's MPP environment.

Then, you’ll explore, prepare, and analyze data using the CAS server, taking advantage of the CAS server's distributed processing power using familiar pandas API and CAS actions from the SWAT package. Lastly, you’ll learn how to unite traditional python packages such as Pandas and Matplotlib with the summarized results from the CAS server for additional processing and visualization.

What attendees had to say about this session:

“Lots of valuable information on using python in SAS!”

“The Jupyter notebook format really made it easy to follow the presentation.”

“Overall, this session was outstanding.”

Watch the full training session for free now on YouTube:

#3: Software workshop: End-to-end machine learning in Model Studio

Effective predictive modeling projects follow the SAS analytics life cycle, from data to discovery and then deployment. SAS Viya provides the capability to perform all these steps from one graphical user interface, making the transition between stages of the analytics life cycle seamless.

In this training, you'll load data into memory, prepare input variables for modeling, and build complex analytics pipelines to demonstrate powerful machine-learning models. Need to better understand your model? No problem. We’ll show you how to produce model interpretability plots. Need to integrate open-source models? No problem. We’ll show you how to do that and deploy any model with one click. Then the best-performing model is saved and packaged for deployment, and you can still retrain this model on new data – all from the same shared interface.

What attendees had to say about this session:

“The best session of all. Well explained!”

“Having a virtual lab where I can follow the training step-by-step gave me a fantastic experience. The instructor is amazing. Thank you all!”

“I learned about options that I did not know existed.”

“Being walked through the entire process from end to end was amazing!”

Watch the full training session for free now on YouTube:

#4: Speaking to Microsoft Excel with PROC SQL in SAS® Viya®

Microsoft Excel, SQL and SAS are all equally loved for their unique strengths. Excel has been a go-to for a long time. Database workers live in SQL. SAS Viya is a cloud-enabled, in-memory analytics engine that provides quick, accurate, and reliable analytical insights. What would it be like to stay in the comfort of SAS while beckoning Excel in to join data using PROC SQL?

If you have wondered how this is possible, this is the session for you. Watch this incredible trio in action. You will learn to bring in data from Excel to SAS Viya using SAS engines, join multiple Excel spreadsheets, summarize data within SAS Viya using PROC SQL, and send the results to Excel. And you do all these things within SAS. Charu will show you a great way to build a bridge between SAS coders and colleagues who never code. All levels welcome!

What attendees are saying:

“The whole session is useful!”

“Charu, thank you! Your teaching skills are excellent. The presentation was exceptionally clear. You add detail just where it is needed. Very easily understood. The steps in code were very logical. I think this presentation is the best I have viewed in SAS Explore!”

“I loved the combination of the presenter's communication skills and the step-by-step examples! Great job!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

Watch the full training session for free now on YouTube:

#5: Struggling with syntax? SAS® Studio to the rescue!

One of the more frustrating elements of learning to code in SAS is mastering the syntax. In this hands-on SAS training, you’ll learn how to use SAS Studio tasks in SAS OnDemand for Academics to automatically generate code for various statistical analyses such as t-tests, analysis of variance, linear regression, and logistic regression. For even more flexibility in our modeling, you’ll also learn the autocomplete and dynamic syntax tooltips in the programming editor of SAS Studio – which aids in the construction of more dynamic statistical models.

Both sets of SAS Studio tools will help you obtain results from statistical analyses faster – so that you can focus more on the results… rather than the syntax errors. For our academic partners, this means more time covering course content, making you and your students more productive.

What attendees are saying:

“This was a great session. Simple data but the analysis was laid out logically and then showed how easy it was to code using pre-built tasks. The instructor was also very knowledgeable.”

“Concise and interesting demonstration. I liked that she used the same data set in all analyses.”

“I have never used the left menu before. Helpful to know a different way to do things.”

Watch the full training session for free now on YouTube:

Keep exploring free SAS training

If you loved these free SAS trainings you’d love the rest too. Explore 50+ free virtual sessions on our YouTube channel now.

You’ll find topics like SAS Viya in Microsoft Azure, Connected Supply Chain Planning, Building Analytical Applications, Demystifying SAS Certification, Automated Large-Scale Forecasting, Preventing Bias in AI, and so much more. All the sessions are full of tips and tricks to help you do more with SAS.

Now that you’ve gotten a peek into the goodness that awaits, it’s time to dive into SAS Explore 2022 on demand!

SAS training: 5 free sessions technologists love was published on SAS Users.