Free SAS Institute A00-215 Practice Exam with Questions & Answers

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 report shown is a cross-tabulation of 'Region' by 'Product'. The FREQ Procedure indicates that PROC FREQ has been used, and the presence of 'Frequency', 'Percent', 'Row Percent', and 'Column Percent' suggests that a cross tabulation (or contingency table) has been requested. The correct code for this output would include the tables statement to specify the two variables ('Region' and 'Product') with an asterisk between them, which indicates a request for a cross-tabulation of these two categorical variables, and the crosslist option to display the table in a cross-tabulated list format. Therefore, option D is the correct answer:

proc freq data=sashelp.shoes;

tables region*product / crosslist;

run;

Options A and C use the order=freq option incorrectly, as this option would order the table by frequency counts rather than providing a cross-tabulation. Option B is missing the crosslist option needed to produce the cross-tabulated format.

In the given DATA step, the do weeks=1 to 3; loop iterates three times for each row in the original WORK.RUN dataset, incrementing the miles value by 5 for each iteration and outputting a row after each increment. However, no output; statement is given within the loop to create the extra rows, which means only the last iteration of the loop will be outputted for each original row. Hence, the miles value for each name will be incremented by 15 (5 miles for each of the 3 weeks).

The original data set WORK.RUN has:

John 16

Mary 20

After the DATA step, it should be:

John 31

Mary 35

Each name appears only once because without an explicit output; statement inside the loop, only the final iteration is outputted. The variable weeks is not retained in the output dataset, as it is not used outside the loop and no output statement is used inside the loop. Thus, option D is correct.

References:

• SAS documentation on DATA step processing, SAS Institute.

The type of error that does not produce expected results and does not generate errors or warnings in the log is a logic error. Logic errors occur when there is a flaw in the program's logic, which causes it to operate incorrectly, but the syntax is correct so it does not produce any error or warning messages. Unlike syntax errors which are mistakes in the program's code that prevent it from compiling or running, logic errors are more insidious because the program still runs but yields incorrect results. For example, a programmer may accidentally code an incorrect formula or use a wrong variable name that still exists, so the program runs but produces incorrect output.

References:

• SAS documentation on error types.

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

Option B is correct. In SAS, variable names must be 1 to 32 characters in length. The other statements about variable names are incorrect:

• A is incorrect because variable names are not case sensitive in SAS.
• C is incorrect because variable names are required when you create a data set; each column must have a unique name.
• D is incorrect because variable names cannot start with a number, though they can start with an underscore or a letter.

References:

• SAS 9.4 documentation on SAS variables.

To subset data in SAS using the data step, the where statement is used to specify the conditions that observations must meet to be included in the new data set. The correct syntax for subsetting the SASHELP.BASEBALL data set to include only players in the 'East' Division with 75 or more hits is as follows:

data bball;

set sashelp.baseball;

where Division = 'East' and nHits >= 75;

run;

This code, as shown in option D, uses the where statement with the correct logical operator and to ensure that both conditions must be true for a record to be included in the new dataset. Options A, B, and C either use incorrect syntax or logical operations that do not match the required conditions for the subset. Option A has an incorrect combination of conditions, B uses two where statements which is not valid syntax, and C incorrectly uses the or operator which would include players not in the 'East' Division or with fewer than 75 hits.

The SAS program provided includes a PROC FORMAT step that defines a numeric format called Syn and applies this format to the variable answer in the PROC PRINT step. The format maps the value '0' to 'No', '1' to 'Yes', and all other values to 'Unknown'.

However, there is a syntax error in the PROC FORMAT step: it uses a dollar sign before Syn, which is used to indicate character formats, but the format is defined for numeric values (0 and 1). Therefore, when applying this format to the answer variable in PROC PRINT, it should not have a dollar sign, it should be format answer Syn.; instead of format answer $yn.;.

The correct output based on the given code, assuming the error with the dollar sign is corrected, would be as follows:

• For numeric values 0 and 1, 'No' and 'Yes' would be displayed, respectively.
• For any other numeric value, 'Unknown' would be displayed.
• For character values, the format would not apply and the actual values would be displayed.

Given that the values in the 'answer' column are numeric, the program will format them according to the defined Syn format. Thus, the report corresponding to Option D, which shows numeric values unformatted, would be the one created. This indicates that the format was not applied because of the syntax error with the dollar sign.

References:

• SAS 9.4 documentation for the FORMAT procedure and statement: SAS Help Center: PROC FORMAT

The correct answer is D. This option uses the PROC PRINT procedure, which is used to print SAS data sets. The format statement within PROC PRINT temporarily assigns a format to a variable for the duration of the PROC PRINT step. Here is how it works:

• data=sashelp.shoes; tells SAS which dataset to print.
• Format sales comma12.; temporarily assigns a comma format to the sales variable, making it easier to read, especially if the numbers are large. The comma12. format adds commas for thousands, millions, etc., and displays the number in a field that is 12 characters wide.
• The format is only applied for the duration of the PROC PRINT step and does not permanently change the dataset.

The other options are incorrect for the following reasons:

• Option A attempts to use a PROC FORMAT step, which is for creating custom formats, not for assigning formats to variables in a dataset.
• Option B uses a DATA step which could permanently assign the format to the sales variable if it were syntactically correct (it should be set sashelp.shoes; instead of Set sashelp,sheoes;).
• Option C mentions PROC CONTENTS which displays metadata about variables in a dataset and does not have the capability to assign formats.

References:

• SAS 9.4 documentation for the PROC PRINT statement: SAS Help Center: PROC PRINT

In PROC PRINT, the VAR statement is used to control the order of the variables displayed in the report. You can list the variables in the order you want them to appear. The KEEP statement can control which variables appear, but not their order. DROP and SELECT are not valid statements within PROC PRINT for controlling the order of variables.

References

• SAS documentation for PROC PRINT.