Pass the SAS Institute Programming Fundamentals A00-215 Questions and answers with ExamsMirror

In SAS, the PROC SORT procedure is used to sort data. To save the sorted data into a new dataset, the OUT= option is used in the PROC SORT statement. This option allows you to specify the name of the output dataset that will contain the sorted data.

Here is how it's used:

proc sort data=original out=sorted; by variable; run; will sort the dataset original by variable and create a new dataset named sorted containing the sorted data.

Option A, Data=, is not valid for the PROC SORT procedure. Option B, SORTOUT=, is a common misconception but is not correct; OUT= is the right option. Option C, OUTPUT=, is not used within PROC SORT; it is used in other procedures such as PROC TABULATE and PROC SUMMARY for output datasets.

References:

SAS 9.4 documentation for the PROC SORT statement: SAS Help Center: PROC SORT

The step that reads the SASHELP.BASEBALL data set and creates the temporary data set CATCHERS is:

data catchers;

set sashelp.baseball;

where position='C';

run;

This DATA step creates a new data set named catchers by reading in data from sashelp.baseball and selecting only those observations where the variable position has the value 'C', which stands for catchers.

The PROC MEANS report shown in the image displays statistics for a single variable Age with no decimal places. The correct SAS code to generate such a report is option D, which uses the PROC MEANS procedure with the maxdec=0 option to control the number of decimal places displayed (in this case, zero) and specifies Age as the analysis variable using the var statement.

The PROC MEANS procedure computes descriptive statistics for numeric variables. The maxdec=0 option is used here to remove decimal places from the report output, which matches the output shown where the mean, standard deviation, minimum, and maximum are all integers.

The other options are incorrect for the following reasons:

A uses the class statement, which is not appropriate here because Age is not a classification variable but an analysis variable.

B uses the group statement, which is not a valid statement in the PROC MEANS procedure.

C uses the by statement, which requires the data to be sorted by the BY variable and does not fit the output provided since it would produce separate statistics for each value of Age.

References:

SAS 9.4 documentation for the PROC MEANS statement: SAS Help Center: PROC MEANS

In SAS program syntax, character strings are indeed case sensitive when enclosed in quotation marks. If you compare two character strings of the same letters but different cases, SAS will treat them as different values. For example, 'Hello' is not the same as 'hello'.

Option A is incorrect because the ampersand (&) is not used for comments in SAS; it is used for macro variable references. Option B is incorrect because global statements such as LIBNAME and options do not require a RUN statement to execute. Finally, option D is incorrect because SAS can process steps with multiple statements on the same line, provided that they are correctly separated by semicolons.

References

SAS 9.4 Language Reference: Concepts, "SAS Language Elements and Syntax."

The DROP statement during the compilation phase of the DATA step flags variables in the Program Data Vector (PDV) to be dropped when the data set is output. This means that although the variables exist in the PDV during the DATA step execution, they will not be written to the output data set. The DROP statement does not affect the order of variables (which is the purpose of the ORDER= data set option), nor does it remove variables from the input data set or prevent them from being created in the PDV.

References:

SAS documentation on the DROP statement.

The reason the labels for MSRP, MPG_City, and MPG_Highway are not displaying in the PROC PRINT report is that the LABEL option was not used in the PROC PRINT statement. In SAS, even if you have label statements in your DATA step, you must also specify the LABEL option in the PROC PRINT statement for those labels to be used in the report output. Thus, the correct answer is Option A: You must use the LABEL option on the PROC PRINT statement.

References:

SAS documentation on the PROC PRINT statement and LABEL option, SAS Institute.

The PROC SORT step in SAS is used to sort data sets by one or more variables. The syntax for the proc sort step requires the by statement to specify the variable(s) by which to sort the data. The correct answer is option A:

proc sort data=Names;

by Name;

run;

This sorts the data set by the variable 'Name' in alphabetical order, which matches the sorted NAMES data set shown in the question. Option B uses orderby, which is not a valid SAS statement. Option C sorts by 'Age', which would not give the same result as shown in the question. Option D also incorrectly uses orderby.

In SAS, footnotes are set using the footnote statement and they will appear on all subsequent output until they are either changed or cleared. Based on the second image provided with the SAS code, the footnote for the second PROC PRINT report is set immediately before it runs.

The code sets footnote1 as 'Created by HR' and footnote2 as 'Confidential' initially. However, before the second PROC PRINT step, footnote2 is redefined as 'Draft - Do Not Distribute'. Since footnote1 is not redefined or cleared, it is no longer in effect for the second report.

Therefore, the only footnote that appears for the second PROC PRINT report is what is defined for footnote2 at that point in the code, which is 'Draft – Do Not Distribute'. That's why the correct answer is D.

References:

SAS 9.4 documentation for the FOOTNOTE statement: SAS Help Center: FOOTNOTE Statement

The correct statement to import a CSV file into SAS and create a dataset is option B. The PROC IMPORT statement is used in SAS to read data from external files and create a SAS data set. Let's break down why option B is correct:

datafile= specifies the location and filename of the external data file. In this case, "sales.csv" is the correct filename and format for a CSV file.

dbms=csv tells SAS that the format of the external data file is CSV (comma-separated values).

out=mydata.sales; specifies the name of the output SAS dataset. It consists of two parts: the libref mydata and the dataset name sales. This tells SAS to store the new dataset in a library called mydata with the dataset name sales.

Option A uses an incorrect syntax as it incorrectly specifies the data= option, which is not valid in this context. Also, the out= option is incorrectly quoted and terminated with a semicolon within the quotes.

Option C has a typo in the out= option (out=mydata.gales;), which incorrectly specifies the output dataset name. Additionally, it incorrectly specifies the data= option, which should actually be datafile=.

Option D has incorrectly quoted the out= option and uses a hyphen instead of an equals sign. Additionally, it does not use quotes around the filename, which may cause issues if the filename contains special characters or spaces.

References:SAS 9.4 documentation, specifically the PROC IMPORT statement: SAS Help Center: PROC IMPORT Statement

The correct syntax for generating the mean and standard deviation for specified variables using PROC MEANS is shown in option A. The PROC MEANS statement specifies the dataset to analyze (data=class) and includes the options (mean std) directly in the PROC statement. The VAR statement then lists the variables for which the statistics should be calculated (Height and Weight). The other options listed in B, C, and D are not correct syntax for PROC MEANS.