A Roadmap to SAS® Certified Professional: Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning
By: Rucha Sawarkar
Tags: Sas, Artificalintelligence, Certification, Information, Machine Learning

Being a professional Data Scientist at 3K technologies my responsibility is to explore new tools related with Artificial Intelligence like SAS. 3K technology is currently partnered with SAS. In this blog we will understand about SAS, its tools and SAS Certification in Artificial Intelligence and Machine learning.

SAS is a statistical software suite developed by SAS Institute for Data Management, Advanced Analytics, Multivariate Analysis, Business Intelligence, Criminal Investigation and Predictive Analytics. SAS was developed at North Carolina State University from 1966 until 1976, when SAS Institute was incorporated.

In March 2021, our company participated in SAS Hackathon, where I got chance to work on various SAS tools. We got the full exposure of SAS tools and more specifically related to IoT. SAS has provided us lot of learning materials to help us implement our Use Case for SAS Hackathon.

Recently I have passed one of the SAS certified exam. While preparing for this exam, I got to know there are very limited resources available publicly to help you qualify these exams. SAS is providing a very great service in Analytics domain. Getting a SAS Certification is advantageous to you as well as your organization.

To become SAS Certified professional, there are three exams which you have to qualify. I will explain in detail about the cost of exam, right place to get the resources to prepare and the cost of those resources.

The three exams which you have to qualify are as given below:

SAS® Certified Specialist: Machine Learning Using SAS Viya 3.5 SAS® Certified Specialist: Forecasting and Optimization Using SAS® Viya 3.5 SAS® Certified Specialist: Natural Language Processing and Computer Vision Using SAS Viya 3.5

We will explore each one in detail.

SAS® Certified Specialist: Machine Learning Using SAS Viya 3.5

This exam is for data scientists who create supervised machine learning models using pipelines in SAS Viya

Successful candidates will get familiar with SAS Visual Data Mining and Machine Learning software and be skilled in tasks such as:

Preparing data and feature engineering

Creating supervised machine learning models

Assessing model performance

Deploying models into production

Cost of the exam — 15000 INR

Passing Percentage — 65%

Multiple choice questions around 50–55

Exam duration is 100 minutes

Course to be taken

Machine Learning Using SAS Viya https://support.sas.com/edu/schedules.html?crs=CPML83&ctry=in Cost of the course — 6000 INR

I would suggest giving at least 1–2 months to complete the course and prepare for the exam.

SAS® Certified Specialist: Forecasting and Optimization Using SAS® Viya 3.5

This exam is for data scientists, forecasters, analysts, economists and others who create forecasting models and solve optimization problems.

Successful candidates will get familiar with SAS® Model Studio for SAS® Viya® 3.5 and be skilled in tasks such as:

Automatically create and fit custom forecast models using structured analytic workflows or pipelines

Visualize modeling data using attribute variables

Refine forecast models to improve forecast accuracy

Apply overrides to generated forecasts

Generate forecast models for deployment

Build and share custom pipelines for large-scale forecasting analysis

Solve optimization problems using linear, mixed integer linear and non-linear programming

Cost of the exam — 15000 INR

Passing Percentage — 70%

Multiple choice questions around 50

Exam duration is 90 minutes

Course to be taken

Forecasting Using Model Studio in SAS Viya

https://support.sas.com/edu/schedules.html?crs=ORVY&ctry=in Cost of the course — 21600 INR

2. Optimization Concepts for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence

https://support.sas.com/edu/schedules.html?crs=ORVY&ctry=in Cost of the course — 14400 INR

SAS® Certified Specialist: Natural Language Processing and Computer Vision Using SAS Viya 3.5

For data scientists, text and image analysts, AI specialists and others who analyze text and image data to recognize patterns.

Successful candidates should be familiar with SAS® Model Studio for SAS® Viya®, SAS® Visual Text Analytics and SAS® Data Mining and Machine Learning and be skilled in tasks such as:

Loading and Preparing text and image data.

Using the point-and-click interface of Model Studio and SAS Visual Text Analytics.

Interpreting term maps and automatically identify key textual topics in your large document collections.

Creating, modifying and enabling (or disabling) custom concepts and testing linguistic rule definitions with validation checks within the same interactive GUI.

Extracting individual instances of concepts from within documents.

Creating custom Boolean rules to categorize documents with respect to a categorical target variable and automatically modify those rules.

Programming in CASL (experience with other languages, i.e. Python, R, Lua may benefit candidates)

Defining and understanding deep learning and building models using deep learning techniques.

Applying models to score (inference) new data.

Modifying data for better analysis results.

Searching the hyperparameter space of a deep learning model.

Cost of the exam — 15000 INR

Passing Percentage — 70%

Multiple choice questions around 60

Exam duration is 110 minutes

Course to be taken

SAS Visual Text Analytics in SAS Viya

https://support.sas.com/edu/schedules.html?crs=ORVY&ctry=in Cost of the course — 14400 INR

2. Deep Learning Using SAS Software

https://support.sas.com/edu/schedules.html?crs=ORVY&ctry=in Cost of the course — 21600 INR

All the courses mentioned above are provided by SAS. We can buy these courses only on SAS official website. However, the first course i.e. Machine Learning Using SAS Viya is also available on Coursera . Once you buy the course from official website, you have the access for 180 days since the date of purchase. All these courses provide access to virtual lab where you have exposure to SAS tools. Demo provided in the courses are very useful to get familiar with SAS tools. To pass the exam, it is very important to explore SAS tools as much as possible. The difficulty level is slightly high for these exams and you should prepare well before appearing for the exam. Also, five attempts are allowed for each exam in a 12-month period, waiting a minimum of 14 days between attempts.

To register for the exam, you can log on to SAS Certification Manager Account (http://www.certmetrics.com/sas). SAS Certification Manager also provides practice exams for preparation which again will cost around 5000 INR.

To register for the exam, you can log on to SAS Certification Manager Account (http://www.certmetrics.com/sas). SAS Certification Manager also provides practice exams for preparation which again will cost around 5000 INR.

Thank you for the read. I sincerely hope you found it helpful and as always, I am open to queries.

Drop me a mail at rsawarkar80@gmail.com/rucha.s@3ktechnologies.com.

You can find me on LinkedIn.