Introductory Reference on SAS

When I was in 2nd year of my undergrad in Dhaka University, my elder brother got me a gift which he bought for me while coming back after finishing his course works in U.S. The gift was a thin book and the title of the book was sort of funny - "The Little SAS Book: A Primer" written by two ladies Lora D. Delwiche and Susan J. Slaughter. My brother is a non-statistics guy and the text in my university was something else - "Applied Statistics and the SAS Programming Language" by Ronald P. Cody and Jeffrey K. Smith, which is recognized as a good text all over the world. Therefore, I was sort of disappointed in my brother for wasting money (well, I was actually hoping to get some electronic gadget from him).

However, when I started reading the book, I was fascinated by the idea of the organization of the book: it had 10 chapters and each was filled up with small sections, each ending within 2 pages! The writting was so non-technical, I could not resist reading the entire book at a stretch! I guess the book might not be appropriate as a text for professional statisticians, but could be great start for a 2nd year statistics student who might like to explore SAS by him/her-self before any regular course. The book by Ronald P. Cody and Jeffrey K. Smith is a great book, but some students could find it too wordy, but "The Little SAS Book: A Primer" is very concise and easy reading for any audience, statistician or non-statistician.

A sample chapter can be viewed in sas support site and all the codes are available in sas ftp site (please check sas companion sites for more fascinating books and reviews). Good thing, I left the book in ISRT library before I left Bangladesh (and left a master-photocopy to a Nilkhet book-seller so that he can sell it in low price to other students who might be interested). I hope others also get in touch of this particular book and feel the same joy I felt several years ago :)

(The above comentary was written assuming audience knows the value of SAS in the statistics community, along with the bizarre coding system it has :p)
(NOT UPDATED SINCE 2008)

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