Say rather that StataCorp is happy to acknowledge
that some users know more about some technical
areas than they do, as could only be expected.
StataCorp houses a very formidable
team of developers with clutches of master's
degrees, doctorates and even an honorary doctorate.
They also strive to maintain and enhance their statistical
expertise. Among other things, there is a very
substantial technical library at StataCorp with
sets of major journals and technical monographs,
and they are just down the road from Texas A and M.
In total, StataCorp know less statistics than
the users; on average they know an awful lot more!
As I understand it, Mata programs require Stata 9.
Nick
[email protected]
David Airey
> Stata seems to now have all the parts (graphics language,
> programmable dialogs, ado language, Mata language) that
> statisticians
> could want (what by the way is missing in terms of tools?).
> Development of Stata can proceed along the lines of additional
> solutions or speeding up existing solutions, by users of Stata and
> Stata Corp. Stata 9 came with enough additional solutions and GUI
> changes to warrant an upgrade, on top of what must have been a very
> substantial effort by Stata Corp to produce Mata. I remember reading
> somewhere that Stata Corp viewed itself as knowing less statistics
> than the users, and it was a goal of theirs to provide tools &
> solutions. Along these lines, Stata is a very impressive
> application.
> I'll still use Data Desk for certain EDA tasks and R for others
> (Bioconductor.org), but I still prefer Stata from a non-
> statistician / user point of view.
>
> One question I have: If an application is made with Mata (9), does
> this mean that Stata < 9 users can take advantage of the speed
> improvement or not. That is is Mata 9 backward compatible?
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