Free SAS A00-215 Exam Practice Questions & Explanations

The VAR statement in PROC MEANS is used to specify the variables for which you want to calculate the descriptive statistics such as the mean and standard deviation. You list the names of one or more numeric variables after the VAR statement to include them in the analysis. Therefore, option D is the correct answer.

Reference

SAS documentation for PROC MEANS.

The correct syntax for the CONTENTS procedure is to specify the dataset to be described using the data= option. The dataset should be identified by its library and name, separated by a period. The correct syntax is therefore Proc contents data=library.dataset;, which makes Option C the correct answer: Proc contents data=sashelp.shoes;. This statement will produce the contents of the dataset 'shoes' in the 'sashelp' library.

SAS documentation on the CONTENTS procedure, SAS Institute.

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.

The correct syntax for a conditional if-then block in SAS that includes a do group for executing multiple statements is:

if condition then do;

statement1;

statement2;

end;

In Option B, the syntax if age<13 then do; opens a do group, and age_Cat='Pre-teen'; and account='No Social Media'; are the two statements inside the do group, followed by an end; statement to close the group. However, there is a typo with the use of dashes instead of equal signs for assignment in the variable statements which seems to be an error, so technically, none of the provided options has the correct syntax without an error. The correct syntax should use equal signs (=) for assignment within the do group:

if age<13 then do;

age_Cat='Pre-teen';

account='No Social Media Allowed';

end;

SAS documentation on conditional processing with IF-THEN/ELSE statements, SAS Institute.

https://documentation.sas.com/?docsetId=proc&docsetTarget=n12jw1r2n7auqqn1urrh8jwezk00.htm&docsetVersion=9.4&locale=en#:~:text=ASCENDING%20is%20the%20default%20sort%20order.&text=In%20a%20PROC%20SORT%20KEY,is%20sorted%20in%20ascending%20order.

The default sort order for PROC SORT in SAS is ascending. This means that if no other sort order is specified, SAS will arrange the data in ascending order based on the values of the variable(s) listed in the BY statement.

Here's an example:

proc sort data=mydata; by variable; run; sorts mydata by variable in ascending order by default.

The other options are incorrect in the context of the default sort order:

A . 'Internal' is not a sort order.

C . 'Formatted' refers to sorting data based on formatted values, not the default order.

D . 'Descending' is an alternative sort order that must be explicitly specified with the DESCENDING keyword.

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