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Re: [PLUG] off-topic: SAS/SPSS/SQL training worth it?
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On Thu, 2004-10-07 at 22:10, mmalten@comcast.net wrote:
> I'm looking at a career hop out of academic research and I could use some
> advice.
>
> Since I do a lot of data analysis, I've been looking at data analysis
> jobs. However, where I've been marinating in Matlab, with dashes of
> system identification and time series analysis, everyone else seems to be
> asking for SAS.
I've had the pleasure/misfortune of using SAS for data analysis for
about 8 months back in 2000/2001. I think I was using version 8.
> A fundamentals of SAS education package would cost $2700 for three classes
> (it seems SAS is running a sale, ha-hah). I have the money and I would
> happily spend it to expand my career horizions. But is SAS the way to go?
> There's also SPSS and SQL in demand.
My employer did not give me any SAS training. They had some printed
manuals, but they were from the 70s and 80s and very mainframe
oriented. I ended learning from the online documentation. The online
documentation was by no means very good, but it was fairly complete.
If you're the kind of person (like me) who can learn effectively without
formal training and you have access to a working SAS installation I'd
save my money and learn from the online documentation and
experimentation. The idea of giving SAS $2700 gives me the
heebie-geebies, but thats just me.
Same thing for SQL, the difference there is that you can download free
implementations (mysql, postgresql, sqlite, etc) and you can get decent
books at your average book store.
My opinion of SAS itself: It's a powerful program and has a lot of
advanced functions available (which is good if you have use for them),
but the SAS language was designed back in the 60s/70s mainframe days.
While they've added stuff since then, the language really shows its old
age. All variables must be 8 characters or less. The statement for
hard coding records of data is the "cards" statement (referring to punch
cards). SAS has a GUI but it is a complete piece of %^&*#. I never
used the GUI except to access the online documentation.
My frustrations with SAS were large enough that I hope I never have to
use it again, but part of that frustration stems from the fact that my
manager wanted to use SAS for _everything_ which to me was silly.
> The jobs that have been attracting my eye have been jobs in which
> statistics is applied in health care. I like being an anal analyst, but I
> still like the idea of doing something that's a public good (which was my
> motivation for academic research in the first place!)
I heard that SAS is fairly ubiquitous in the drug industry and in the
Food and Drug Administration.
> Advice for the over-educated, under-witted and probably impractical?
> Since this is off-topic, private email might be preferable.
Well that's my 2 cents on SAS.
Sincerely,
Jason
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