Important SAS A00-215 Exam Questions

Answer: A

Explanation:

To rename a variable when reading a dataset in SAS, you use the rename= option inside the parentheses following the dataset's name in the set statement. The correct syntax for renaming the variable 'Name' to 'StudentName' is: rename=(oldname=newname). Therefore, the correct option is A, which correctly places the old variable name 'Name' first, followed by an equal sign, and then the new variable name 'StudentName'. The parentheses enclose the rename operation, and it is correctly nested within the set statement.

SAS documentation on the RENAME= data set option, SAS Institute.

Answer: D

Explanation:

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.

Answer: A

Explanation:

When creating two SAS data sets with a DATA step, you should name both data sets in the DATA statement. This tells SAS to create two separate data sets from the same DATA step. Using an OUT= option in the WHERE statement or a PUT statement are not correct methods for creating data sets. A SET statement is used to read data into the DATA step, not to create output data sets.

SAS documentation on the DATA step for creating multiple data sets.

Answer: D

Explanation:

When using a BY statement in a DATA step, SAS creates two temporary variables for each BY variable: FIRST.variable and LAST.variable. These are used to indicate the beginning and end of each BY group.

For Ellen's observation:

First.State=1 because this is the first occurrence of the state 'OH' in the dataset when sorted by the state variable, which makes it the beginning of a new group for 'OH'.

Last.State=0 because Ellen is not the last observation

for the state 'OH' group. In the given dataset snippet, there appears to be only one observation for the state 'OH', but since the data is sorted by state, and we don't see another 'OH' below Ellen, we can deduce that Ellen's observation is not the last 'OH' observation in the entire dataset. If there were no more 'OH' observations following Ellen's, then Last.State would be 1.

The FIRST.variable is set to 1 for the first observation in each BY group and 0 for all other observations in the group. Conversely, LAST.variable is set to 1 for the last observation in each BY group and 0 otherwise. Since we're assuming that the dataset is larger than the snippet shown, and the data continues beyond what is visible, we must assume there are more observations for 'OH' unless indicated otherwise.

Reference

'SAS 9.4 Language Reference: Concepts.' SAS Institute Inc.

'BY-Group Processing' in 'SAS Programming 1: Essentials' course material, SAS Institute.

Answer: A

Explanation:

In SAS, the SUBSTR function is used to extract a substring from a character string. The function syntax is SUBSTR(string, position, length), where:

string is the variable or string literal you want to extract the substring from.

position is the starting position of the substring within string.

position starts counting at 1 in SAS, not 0 as in some other languages.

length is the number of characters to extract.

For the value of date provided ('02Apr2019'), we want to extract the year, which is the four characters at the end of the string.

Here's how each option would work given the string:

A) year=substr(date, 7, 4); This starts at the 7th character of the string ('2019') and extracts 4 characters, which correctly represents the year.

B) year=substr(date, 4, 6); This starts at the 4th character ('Apr2019') and would extract 6 characters, which gives us 'Apr201', not just the year.

C) year=substr(date, 6, 4); This starts at the 6th character ('r2019') and would extract 4 characters, resulting in 'r201', which is not correct.

D) year=substr(date, 4, 7); This starts at the 4th character and would extract 7 characters, resulting in 'Apr2019', which is the whole string from the 4th character to the end, not just the year.

The correct answer is A, as it extracts the four-digit year from the end of the string.

The SAS documentation on the SUBSTR function, which details how to use it for extracting parts of strings.

SAS programming tutorials that often provide examples of common functions like SUBSTR for string manipulation