I'll complete my Master's degree in a year and I was thinking of learning SAS as I've heard it gives you an edge over other candidates while being recruited. Could you tell me if I can learn it online and learn it well?
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3$\begingroup$ Part of this is addressed at stats.stackexchange.com/questions/89376/… and indeed elsewhere here. It's difficult to summarize impartially, but note that many people challenge the alleged importance or dominance of SAS, with a mix of reasons varying from disliking it on principle to emphasising the usefulness and widespread use of other software in practice. $\endgroup$– Nick CoxCommented Mar 26, 2014 at 13:06
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$\begingroup$ From my experience (hiring & being hired) it doesn't matter all that much which particular languages candidates for statistician posts have learnt, as long as they've practice in statistical programming. As a graduate there may be more distinctive strings you could add to your bow than one more technical competency - volunteering to work in your university's stats clinic, off the top of my head. Of course things vary a lot between industries & countries, so don't take that as gospel; but equally, don't believe everything you hear. $\endgroup$– Scortchi ♦Commented Mar 26, 2014 at 18:11
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Online resources:
UCLA has compiled a list of resources
You can also use Google search term such as SAS learning filetype:pdf to look for tutorials. For instance, I found this great list made by Stojanovic.
SAS User Group International (SUGI) also posts conference proceedings online. Each paper addresses a particular topic in various degree of complexity. Most of them are structured as a mini tutorial, which is user friendly. (Tip: the site requires a search term, if you're not sure, just leave it empty and click the search button.)
SAS also put a lot of manuals online. For instance, if you Google search proc reg filetype:pdf, you'll find the manual hosted at support.sas.com. You can get a good understanding on handy procedures such as proc sql and ods (Output Delivery System) this way.
Book:
Even online resources are everywhere, there are a couple SAS books that I still read all the time. First, if money allows, I'd suggest get a few titles by Cody. Among which, I'd suggest strongly Learning SAS by Example (Here is an excerpt), Applied Statistics and the SAS Programming Language, and perhaps Cody's Data Cleaning Techniques Using SAS, but this last one is not essential at the early stage.
Another classic you should check out is the The Little SAS Book. It covers a lot of basics, and I'd recommend paring this with Learning SAS by Example; that way you should be able to tackle most of the basic stuff.
