Today all of the Cary Academy students doing the SAS work experience program were together again to learn about and work with the specific software and technologies that employees at SAS use to analyze data and create visuals. From being introduced to the programming system, the SAS design studio, and the visual analytics program, we were learning and experimenting all day – with a mid-day break for chicken tenders at Building T’s cafeteria of course.
One of our main activities was learning about SAS’s programming system. Since I, and all of the other CA students, had never programmed before the idea of this was somewhat daunting. However, with a detailed, step by step introduction to programming, it was much less complex than I had originally imagined. Below are some screen shots of the work we did.
For our data, we entered in some random numbers and then ran the program to create a frequency analysis and means analysis. Some things we learned include always remembering to put a semicolon at the end of each action, and also how to make notes that sit within the code but do not actually run through the system – these show up in green. Also, if the run fails, we learned to go to the log tab – shown below – and see if there are any errors or notes to indicate what went wrong, which is very useful.
After learning the basics of SAS programming, we were introduced to the SAS design studio where visual analytics can be created from data. Together we went step by step through a few examples, with various types of visuals like bar graphs – pictured below, line charts, lists, and more.
Once we had completed these models, we were able to work independently and experiment with the program to create our own visuals. What made this entire process especially interesting is that we were using real data from the UN about frequency and pricing of foods in different nations. Pictured below is one visual that I created with a pie chart and list, set up so that when you select a certain food on the list the pie chart will depict the frequency of it in specific nations.
Overall, today was an amazing introduction to the world of data science, programming, and analytics, which will be extremely useful in the future!!!