# What is the best way to self-teach Epi-Info and/or SAS?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-best-way-to-self-teach-epi-info-and-or-sas/577215>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [April 5, 2011, 12:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-best-way-to-self-teach-epi-info-and-or-sas/577215 "2011-04-05T00:40:13Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 6\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Amasia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ba9def/32.png) [@Amasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amasia)\
**Post date:** [April 5, 2011, 12:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-best-way-to-self-teach-epi-info-and-or-sas/577215/1 "2011-04-05T00:40:13Z")

</div>

Does anyone have a recommendation for a website, book or other guide to learning SAS or Epi-Info for the purposes of public health related analysis? Any experience of one over the other?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![you\_with\_the\_face](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/ecccb3/32.png) [@you\_with\_the\_face](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/you_with_the_face)\
**Post date:** [April 5, 2011, 12:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-best-way-to-self-teach-epi-info-and-or-sas/577215/2 "2011-04-05T00:58:17Z")

</div>

I’ve found that this cite hold all the answers that I’ve needed for SAS programming: [http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/sas/](http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/sas/). Everything from simple descriptive stats to complicated regression models are explained there.

Epi-Info is NOT my go-to program for analysis. It’s okay, but it’s value is limited when there are much better stat packages out there. CDC probably has a user guide online, though. I’d suggest playing around with it using some real data.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Amasia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ba9def/32.png) [@Amasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amasia)\
**Post date:** [April 5, 2011, 2:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-best-way-to-self-teach-epi-info-and-or-sas/577215/3 "2011-04-05T02:04:26Z")

</div>

Thanks for the advice- looks like a great resource.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Maeglin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8baadc/32.png) [@Maeglin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maeglin)\
**Post date:** [April 5, 2011, 3:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-best-way-to-self-teach-epi-info-and-or-sas/577215/4 "2011-04-05T03:09:34Z")

</div>

For your first experience with SAS, [this](http://www.amazon.com/Little-SAS-Book-Primer-Fourth/dp/1599947250/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1301972918&sr=8-1) is the book you want.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![wheresmymind](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/91b2a8/32.png) [@wheresmymind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wheresmymind)\
**Post date:** [April 5, 2011, 6:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-best-way-to-self-teach-epi-info-and-or-sas/577215/5 "2011-04-05T06:17:43Z")

</div>

The previous posts all seem like great resources. In addition to similar websites, I relied on the ol’ “typing ‘how to I do _this_ in SAS?’ into Google, copying and pasting the code, and playing around with it until it works” method quite a bit when I was doing data analysis in grad school.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![not\_alice](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/not_alice/32/7283_2.png) [@not\_alice](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/not_alice)\
**Post date:** [April 5, 2011, 6:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-best-way-to-self-teach-epi-info-and-or-sas/577215/6 "2011-04-05T06:26:30Z")

</div>

i second **You with the face** on the UCLA site, and also **Maeglin** on the starter book. Been there with both.

But I hope you are not expecting to learn the statistics themselves that you plan to use (or not use) this way. I recommend you already have that well in hand.