I think you can actually spend more money on commercial documentation
for R than you would get if you bought the Stata documentation. I'm
sorry I don't have an AIC or BIC for that comparison.
:)
-Dave
I am a Stata and R user, and i am on both mailing lists (which means I
have to delete tons of crap from my email every day!).
While I recently defended Stata manuals on the R-list, I have to say I
disagree with your cost assessment (quoted above).
It is true that if you buy the core R books you'll probably spend more
$ than buying the full Stata documentation set. The difference
however, is that the contents in those books is quite stable and most
likely you won't need to buy anything else after that, (i.e. you can
figure out the updates made to R in the free online Documentation).
With Stata you have to buy a new documentation set every new release
(roughly every two years), at least if you want to be completely up to
date (I agree that you can survive most of the times with manuals from
the previously release). Once you account for that, the Stata
documentation becomes waaay more costly.
I like the Stata documentation, but it drives me nuts that they don't
have an electronic version of it. I'm ok if Stata Corp wants to make $
and charge a lot for their manuals... but I think life would be much
better if they sell a CD version of the manuals too. If you move
around a lot, having to carry with you the documentation set is
literally impossible.
btw. I thought as curious Maarten's characterization of R as Stata's
"competitor". While both software offer somewhat similar products, I
think the R community is too self-involved to see themselves as
"competing with Stata". For the most part I would say they don't care
as to what goes on in Stataland.
robert
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