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Q1. The following SAS program is submitted:

data work.total;
set work.salary(keep = department wagerate);
by department;
if first.department then payroll = 0;
payroll + wagerate;
if last.department;
run;

The SAS data set named WORK.SALARY contains 10 observations for each department, currently ordered by DEPARTMENT.

Which one of the following is true regarding the program above?
A. The BY statement in the DATA step causes a syntax error.
B. FIRST.DEPARTMENT & LAST.DEPARTMENT are variables in WORK.TOTAL dataset.
C. The values of the variable PAYROLL represent the total for each department in the WORK.SALARY data set.
D. The values of the variable PAYROLL represent a total for all values of WAGERATE in the WORK.SALARY data set.

Answer: C. For every BY group we get the sum of wagerate in the Payroll variable for each department.


Q2. The following SAS program is submitted:

data test;
set sasuser.employees;
if 2 le years_service le 10 then
amount = 1000;
else if years_service gt 10 then
amount = 2000;
else
amount = 0;
amount_per_year = years_service / amount;
run;

Which one of the following values does the variable AMOUNT_PER_YEAR contain if an employee has been with the company for one year?
A. 0
B. 1000
C. 2000
D. . (missing numeric value)

Answer : D (missing). It returns missing value as amount will be 0.
SAS Log: NOTE: Mathematical operations could not be performed at the following places. The results of the operations have been set to missing values.


Q3. The contents of the raw data file NAMENUM are listed below:
--------10-------20-------30
Joe xx

The following SAS program is submitted:
data test;
infile 'namenum';
input name $ number;
run;

Which one of the following is the value of the NUMBER variable?
A. xx
B. Joe
C. . (missing numeric value)
D. The value can not be determined as the program fails to execute due to errors.

Answer : C. It is because number is defined as a numeric variable so it is expecting a numeric value but it reads xx, so number will be a missing value.

Q4. How many of the following variable names will not produce errors in an assignment statement?

variable
var
1variable
var1
#var
_variable#

A. 0
B. 1
C. 3
D. 6

Answer : C ; variable var var1. A variable cannot start with numeric or special characters except _. You also cannot use special characters anywhere in the name either though numeric values are allowed.


Q5. Suppose the variable 'Unit_Cost_Price' (numeric) contains both missing and non missing values. What would the following code return?

proc sort data=ecsql1.price_list;
by Unit_Cost_Price;
run;

A. A new dataset work.price_list is created with Unit_Cost_Price sorted in ascending order with missing values at the bottom of the dataset
B. The dataset ecsql1.price_list is sorted with Unit_Cost_Price sorted in descending order with missing values at the bottom of the dataset
C. A new dataset work.price_list is created with Unit_Cost_Price sorted in descending order with missing values at the top of the dataset
D. The dataset ecsql1.price_list is sorted with Unit_Cost_Price sorted in ascending order with missing values at the top of the dataset

Answer : D. It is because missing values are considered as lowest values (ascending order; they will be top of the data set)

Q6. The following SAS program is submitted:

dta work.il_corn;
set corn.state_data;
if state = 'Illinois';
run;
The keyword "data" is misspelled above. What happens to this program during the compilation phase assuming "corn" is a valid libref?


A. The program fails due to syntax errors
B. The DATA step compiles but doesn't execute
C. The DATA step compiles and executes
D. None of the above

Answer : C. It compiles and executes as SAS assumed that the 'dta' was data. But it leaves a warning in log window.

The log shows the following error :
WARNING 1-322: Assuming the symbol DATA was misspelled as dta.
141 run;


Q7. Which of the following is a valid statement about the VALUE range in the PROC FORMAT procedure? It cannot be...

A. A single character or numeric value
B. A range of character values
C. A list of unique values separated by commas
D. A combination of character and numeric values

Answer : D.


Q8. How many of the following statistics that PROC MEANS computes as default statistics?

Standard deviation
Range
Count
Minimum value
Variance
Mode

A. 2
B. 3
C. 4
D. None of the above

Answer : B. By default, PROC MEANS calculates count, mean, standard deviation, minimum and maximum value.


Q9. The following SAS program is submitted:

data work.totalsales (keep = monthsales{12} );
set work.monthlysales (keep = year product sales);
array monthsales {12} ;
do i=1 to 12;
monthsales{i} = sales;
end;
run;

The data set named WORK.MONTHLYSALES has one observation per month for each of five years for a total of 60 observations.

Which one of the following is the result of the above program?
A. The program fails execution due to data errors.
B. The program fails execution due to syntax errors.
C. The program executes with warnings and creates the WORK.TOTALSALES data set.
D. The program executes without errors or warnings and creates the WORK.TOTALSALES data set.

Answer : B. The syntax issue lies in this line of code - keep = msales{12}
To correct the syntax issue, replace keep = msales{12} with keep = msales1-msales12

See the errors in log window :

153 data work.totalsales(keep = msales{12} ) ;

ERROR 214-322: Variable name { is not valid.
ERROR 23-7: Invalid value for the KEEP option.


Q10. The following SAS program is submitted:

data work.accounting;
set work.dept1 work.dept2;
run;

A character variable named JOBCODE exists in both the WORK.DEPT1 and WORK.DEPT2 SAS data sets. The variable JOBCODE has a length of 5 in the WORK.DEPT1 data set and a length of 7 in the WORK.DEPT2 data set.

Which one of the following is the length of the variable JOBCODE in the output data set?

A. 5
B. 7
C. 8
D. 12

Answer : Since SAS checks the variable Job_code in DEPT1 for the first time of length of 5 Bytes. it sets the length to be 5. All the values that are read from DEPT2 are truncated to Chars.

Q31. The following SAS program is submitted:

libname rawdata1 'location of SAS data library';
filename rawdata2 'location of raw data file';
data work.testdata;
infile
input sales1 sales2;
run;

Which one of the following is needed to complete the program correctly?
A. rawdata1
B. rawdata2
C. 'rawdata1'
D. 'rawdata2'

Answer: B. Since we have already initialized the path with a filename, we do not have to include quotation again.


Q32. The following SAS program is submitted and reads 100 records from a raw data file:
data work.total;
infile 'file-specification' end = eof;
input name $ salary;
totsal + salary;

run;
Which one of the following IF statements writes the last observation to the output data set?
A. if end = 0;
B. if eof = 0;
C. if end = 1;
D. if eof = 1;

Answer : D. End is a sas keyword which will become true when SAS reads last record of a dataset. This value you cannot use directly in your program, so we create a alias name eof (end of file), but you can name it anything. EOF will carry the same value as internal variable END. So as we know 1=true and 0= false. if EOF = 1; will output only the last observation.


Q33. In the following SAS program, the input data files are sorted by the NAMES variable:

libname temp 'SAS-data-library';
data temp.sales;
merge temp.sales work.receipt;
by names;
run;

Which one of the following results occurs when this program is submitted?
A. The program executes successfully and a temporary SAS data set is created.
B. The program executes successfully and a permanent SAS data set is created.
C. The program fails execution because the same SAS data set is referenced for both read and write operations.
D. The program fails execution because the SAS data sets on the MERGE statement are in two different libraries.

Answer : B. temp is declared as a permanent library so permanent dataset will be created.

Q34. The contents of two SAS data sets named EMPLOYEE and SALARY are listed below:


data emplsal;
merge employee (in=ine) salary(in=ins);
by name;
if ine and ins;
run;

How many observation are in EMPLSAL dataset?
A. 4
B. 3
c. 2
D. 1

Answer : A.

Run the following SAS code and see what you got in the EMPSAL dataset:

data salary;
input name $ salary;
datalines;
Bruce 40000
Bruce 35000
Dan 37000
Dan .
;
run;

data employee;
input name $ age;
datalines;
Bruce 30
Dan 35
;
run;

data emplsal;
merge employee (in=ine) salary(in=ins);
by name;
if ine and ins;
run;


Q35. The following SAS program is submitted:
data work.products;
Product_Number = 5461;
Item = '1001';
Item_Reference = Item'/'Product_Number;
run;
Which one of the following is the value of the variable ITEM_REFERENCE in the output data set?
A. 1001/5461
B. 1001/ 5461
C. . (missing numeric value)
D. The value can not be determined as the program fails to execute due to errors.

Answer : D. Since there is no concatenate symbol between Item and Product_Number.

Q36. The following SAS program is submitted:

libname sasdata 'SAS-data-library';
data test;
set sasdata.chemists (keep = job_code);
if job_code = 'chem3'
then description = 'Senior Chemist';
run;

The variable JOB_CODE is a character variable with a length of 6 bytes.

Which one of the following is the length of the variable DESCRIPTION in the output data set?
A. 6 bytes
B. 8 bytes
C. 14 bytes
D. 200 bytes

Answer : C. The length of 'Senior Chemist' is 14.


Q37. Which one of the following is true of the RETAIN statement in a SAS DATA step program?

A. It can be used to assign an initial value to _N_ .
B. It is only valid in conjunction with a SUM function.
C. It has no effect on variables read with the SET, MERGE and UPDATE statements.
D. It adds the value of an expression to an accumulator variable and ignores missing values.

Answer : C.

The RETAIN statement
- is a compile-time only statement that creates variables if they do not already exist
- initializes the retained variable to missing before the first execution of the DATA step if you do not supply an initial value
- has no effect on variables that are read with SET, MERGE, or UPDATE statements.


Q38. The following SAS program is submitted:

data work.test;
Title = 'A Tale of Two Cities, Charles J. Dickens';
Word = scan(title,3,',');
run;

Which one of the following is the value of the variable WORD in the output data set?
A. T
B. of
C. Dickens
D. ' ' (missing character value)

Answer : D.


Q39. Which one of the following is true when SAS encounters a data error in a DATA step?

A. The DATA step stops executing at the point of the error, and no SAS data set is created.
B. A note is written to the SAS log explaining the error, and the DATA step continues to execute.
C. A note appears in the SAS log that the incorrect data record was saved to a separate SAS file for further examination.
D. The DATA step stops executing at the point of the error, and the resulting DATA set contains observations up to that point.

Answer : B. If it's a syntax error then the A occurs.
If it's an error with invalid data then B will occur .
If it's a problem with merging two or more datasets, then D will occur.


Q40. The SAS data set EMPLOYEE_INFO is listed below:

IDNumber Expenses
2542 100.00
3612 133.15
2198 234.34
2198 111.12

The following SAS program is submitted:
proc sort data = employee_info;

run;

Which one of the following BY statements completes the program and sorts the data sequentially by ascending expense values within each ascending IDNUMBER value?

A. by Expenses IDNumber;
B. by IDNumber Expenses;
C. by ascending (IDNumber Expenses);
D. by ascending IDNumber ascending Expenses;


Answer : B. By default SAS will sort data in ascending order. IDNumber should be specified before Expenses as we want IDNUMBER to be sorted in ascending.