What is SAS? my qulification is masters in mathematics, Can I learn SAS and will it be useful in my career?

Question

SAS

Answer 1

SAS ia primarily a statistical analysis package that interrogates databases and gives you useful details like averages, deviations etc. It is however much more powerful than that and can be used for retrieving records that meet certain criteria etc. It is therefore useful for running complex algorithms against databases in uses like risk management, fraud control, credit risk etc. It probably has many other uses that I'm not aware of but that's what I've used it for.

I'm not sure how widely it is used today as my experience was 15+ years ago. It was relatively easy to pick up - the logic was more the challenge and does suit those with a mathematical flair.

Answer 2

You mean the programming language SAS? It's a statistical analysis language. It has some incredibly powerful tools that can do a lot of work with just a few statements. However, the syntax of the language (in my opinion) is a garbled mess. The commands are an arcane and oddball set that don't always give you a good clue as to what they actually mean or do. Also, the language is a resource hog. I've run benchmark tests using SAS and a couple of other tools to do the same function, and SAS was far and away the most expensive in terms of CPU time and memory usage.

The people that take the time to really learn the language and use it love it. The people who only use it a little bit once in a while hate it. There's not much middle ground.

Oh, one other thing - if you do try to learn it, look long and hard for a good 3rd party instruction manual, or take a class somewhere. The documentation from the vendor is hard to follow, in my opinion.

Answer 3

SAS is acronym for Statistical Analysis System..basically it's an application used for accessing, manipulating data and performing analysis (simple and statistical).

Statistics is a applied mathematics, so there's definitely a benefit for you if you learn this..specially if you are pursuing a career related to research and the likes...