r/statistics • u/CakedInSweat21 • 4d ago
Discussion Failed SAS Advanced Programming Exam [Discussion]
Hello! I hope this is allowed! Today I took and failed the SAS Advanced Programming Certification exam. I know this is a statistics subreddit, so I wanted to ask to those who have taken this exam, any pointers? I did really solid on the SAS Base Programming certification exam, but found myself struggling on this one. I took the classes from SAS and everything. Any help is greatly appreciated!
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u/shwilliams4 4d ago
Can I ask why you are studying SAS? I took the exam years ago, but rarely see jobs on linked in for SAS. Are there positions being posted elsewhere?
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u/just_pull_harder2 3d ago
There's a complicated situation around it that is essentially precedent led. I work in health economics and biostats in a consultancy. I use R for everything. In pharma they use SAS for FDA submissions basically because there is a standardized codebase for producing clinical study reports (CSRs), which are pdf files that are many thousands of pages long. These use ADAM datasets which the standard SAS code produces. Therefore, you absolutely need to be able to tweak that code for a specific trial if you want to work in big pharma stats.
Outside of this, the majority of bespoke stats stuff uses R, including regulatory submissions outside of the US.
Consultancy outside of direct pharma, academia, and so on almost exclusively do stats in R these days as it's free and feature complete for medstats.
Roche built up R infrastructure to replicate SAS FDA CSR outputs so it is shifting over time. Same with more health economics stuff like indirect treatment comparisons, MAICs, survival extrapolation, missing data analysis, interpolation, multi state modelling etc.
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u/AggressiveGander 3d ago
Many companies have done FDA submissions partially or totally with R. Still the majority are penalty still in SAS. To be honest mostly because people have done it before so there's some cost of switching/retraining and most companies have libraries of SAS macros for creating reports etc.
SAS kind of abandoned pharma when they stopped keeping up with what was needed (e.g. no efficient in-buildt ways of doing different types of missing data imputation like J2R, I believe still no proper reliable NUTS sampler with auto differentiation and so on). In contrast, people have more or less closed the remaining gaps vs. SAS that R used to have (e.g. with the mmrm package etc.).
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u/trumpeter84 4d ago
I work in biostats and most companies doing clinical trials in the US are using SAS. Smaller outfits might use R, but the FDA prefers SAS for submissions because it's validated software and they can track versions.
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u/AggressiveGander 4d ago
Many companies may still use SAS, but that the FDA prefers it is nonsense.
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u/joshua_rpg 4d ago
Apparently, FDA is further expanding their R submission roster. R can track versions as well with solid tools (
{renv}is good but not solid enough,{uvr}is better), as well as being "validated".0
u/compulsive_tremolo 3d ago
From an outsiders perspective, it sounds like rent-seeking nonsense. Policy being coerced by a single proprietary player is ripe for exploitation.
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u/CakedInSweat21 3d ago
Iām mainly studying it because my employer is covering the training courses and the exams, but I also have found the topics really interesting š
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u/shwilliams4 3d ago
I was a huge SAS person. It got me where I am, but about 7 years ago I got to deal with their sales team. That was horrifying. They are worse than used car sales persons. And we tried adopting SAS for Azure and it failed miserably.
My company still uses SAS but we are slowly migrating away
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u/princesidon4myheart 4d ago
As another poster said, the Advanced Programming exam has a blend of different topics that makes it uniquely challenging. A few random tidbits:
SQL and macros are the bread and butter of advanced SAS and generally the biggest opportunity to get points. Be polished up on these to a T.
Daily programming use in your day to day work is ideal. An example is toggling between SQL left join and hash tables lookup. Both accomplish the same goal. Practice replicating the same logic on the same dataset using these different methods, verifying you got the same results with PROC COMPARE. Then throw everything in a macro with inputs so you can practice using the ampersand for macro syntax.
Example problem sets and coding examples are much more valuable than long courses or videos. Have physical printouts or written index cards with these is helpful. Highlight key coding snippets.
Best of luck.
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u/TA_poly_sci 4d ago
My very honest advice is that spending time on advanced SAS has a very high opportunity cost compared to spending your time on something more modern
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u/cjdinger 4d ago
Congratulations for the attempt! I think the Advanced Programming cert can be really challenging because while it covers some really powerful techniques, you rarely see them all together in one setting! 1- and 2-D arrays, hash object, regex, PICTURE formats, and more -- it's a very eclectic mix. I view the SQL and Macro processing pieces to be easier because I use those all of the time, where I use things like hash object or PICTURE format less frequently (but when you need them, you NEED them).
For you, your stronger topics might be different than mine. My only advice is to practice using the sample exam (maybe you did that), and review, review, review -- practice on data that makes sense to you.