The recent issue of Technometrics (vol 50 (4), I've just received it)
has an extensive article with the title in the subject line by Leland
Wilkinson, an extremely smart guy at the interface of statistics and
computer science, the author of SYSTAT and "The Grammar of Graphics"
book (totally incomprehensible to me, but a delight for Vince W, I am
sure :)). The link is http://pubs.amstat.org/toc/tech/50/4. He says,
"Statisticians interested in statistical computing and its future
incarnations will have to engage in joint research with computer
scientists to continue to have an influence." Catching up has been the
situation in data mining for some while now; and it may look like
advances in computing everywhere might phase statisticians out.
There are two paragraphs about Stata (ranked eighth in revenues after
SAS, SPSS, Matlab, Minitab, Statistica, S-Plus and JMP):
"Stata was originally the product of Bill Gould and a small group of
economists from UCLA. It has grown to be a full-featured analytic
company. The distinctive appeal of the package is its expressive and
concise programming language, based on C. Stata's unusual strengths
are in discrete variable modeling, longitudinal/panel designs,
survival analysis, time series analysis, and survey statistics.
Like S–PLUS, Stata will have to deal with the growth of R in its own
field—programmable statistics and data analysis. Unlike S–PLUS,
however, Stata's peculiar strengths and language are different enough
from R to make it a viable alternative, particularly for
economists.Moreover, the Stata user community is intensely loyal, so
we should expect Stata to continue to grow at a respectable rate."
An interesting reading. Stata developers including the top SSC
contributors might want to check it out.
--
Stas Kolenikov, also found at http://stas.kolenikov.name
Small print: I use this email account for mailing lists only.
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