I agree most of your points, especially about the reference and
manual. After all, service and tech support fee is important source of
profit for open-source software.
Yet, I don't find any difficulty in data manipulations in R. Of
course, R has its own advantages too (e.g. Bayesian stats, plotting
system, GUI programming). Personally, I switch from SPSS to R, and use
Stata occasionally. Both R and Stata are really good.
Ronggui
2009/7/26 Martin Weiss <[email protected]>:
>
> <>
>
> R is similar in that you can inspect the underlying code which is also true
> of large parts of Stata. If my econometrics teacher had taught/pushed R for
> several semesters, who knows what I might be using today. But he did not. So
> I tried to learn R on my own during my early days as a PhD student, with the
> help of some expensive books and the pdf manuals, and had to learn the hard
> way that only the licence for R is free, not the insight how to operate the
> thing.
>
> I found data handling in R particularly difficult, and Stata made that a
> breeze :-) It also provided me with dialog boxes to get a grip on the
> syntax. It is hard to exaggerate their influence on my grasp of Stata. And
> it had these brilliant manuals that let you take a look under the hood with
> their "Methods and Formulas" section, and give worked examples and
> literature references for further reading and to cite in a paper submission.
> In short, Stata excells at everything that put me off in R.
>
> All of which makes the licence fee for Stata suddenly look extremely small.
> Just think about the -additional- hours you spend on putting together the
> pieces that you need for a research project in R, and even after the first
> project you are in the black with Stata. That is at least my experience.
> Also, having played around with Stata 11 for the last couple of days, I am
> more convinced than ever that you do want Stata to be your major
> econometrics package on your computer! The pdf manuals, for instance, are
> simply brilliant :-) Everything searchable and clickable!
>
> And there has never been a more exciting time to join the Stata community,
> with the posts on Statalist significantly up from the -already high- traffic
> of the last years!
>
>
> HTH
> Martin
>
> -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
> Von: [email protected]
> [mailto:[email protected]] Im Auftrag von Ronggui Huang
> Gesendet: Sonntag, 26. Juli 2009 15:41
> An: [email protected]
> Betreff: Re: st: AW: Switching from SPSS to Stata
>
> I would be thankful if you can elaborate your ideas on R vs. Stata.
> R is superior than SPSS and is quite similar to Stata to some extent, I
> think.
>
> Ronggui
>
> 2009/7/19 Martin Weiss <[email protected]>:
>>
>> <>
>>
>>
>> I have had pretty much similar experiences, although I came from "R" and
> not
>> SPSS. Still, it is very good to see you here in this vibrant Stata
>> community.
>>
>> Just to kill off that last point you mentioned favoring SPSS. Here is code
>> that automatically converts a -log- to PDF on your windows machine. If you
>> have a MAC, you can use -translate- directly, and if you do not, you
> simply
>> install the free Miktex utilities and off you go:
>>
>> ***
>> //to log in an additional log and have it transferred to pdf
>>
>> //can set -linesize-
>> set linesize 120
>>
>> //close if open
>> capt log close newlog
>> di in red _rc
>>
>> log using mylog.smcl, name(newlog) replace
>>
>> sysuse auto, clear
>> reg price we head gear
>>
>> log close newlog
>>
>> //translate
>> translate mylog.smcl mylog.ps, replace
>> //need Miktex utilities running on computer for this step
>> !ps2pdf mylog.ps
>> capt erase mylog.ps
>> !start mylog.pdf
>> ***
>>
>>
>> HTH
>> Martin
>>
>>
>> -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
>> Von: [email protected]
>> [mailto:[email protected]] Im Auftrag von
>> [email protected]
>> Gesendet: Samstag, 18. Juli 2009 22:56
>> An: [email protected]
>> Betreff: st: Switching from SPSS to Stata
>>
>> Dear Statalisters,
>>
>> I'm working as a research analyst in public health since 1990. I've always
>> used Spss for my statistical analysis (the current version I have is the
>> outdated 12.1 release). I always work with the Spss syntax language,
> almost
>> never with the GUI (maybe one or two times a year).
>>
>> Earlier this year, I had the opportunity to take a look at an evaluation
>> copy of Stata 10. Although I'm not a statistician, it seems to me that
>> Stata is a far more superior statistical software that Spss. One of the
>> things I like about Stata, it's that Stata is a "complete package"
>> relatively to the Spss base software (well, it's true that it is now known
>> as PASW ...). In order to get with Spss what Stata offers, one has to buy
>> rather expensive add-on modules. One of the features I like the most about
>> Stata, is the possibility to analyse data from complex surveys (like the
>> Canadian Community Health Surveys - CCHS). It's not possible to do that
>> with the Spss base version. Stata also appears to me to have a much better
>> online help and documentation. And, to the say the least, the Stata
> support
>> staff is terrific.
>>
>> In my humble opinion, the only advantage I see in Spss over Stata is that
>> the Spss output is nicer than Stata's. It's easy to edit an Spss output
>> (insert a title for example) and distribute it as an PDF file to those who
>> haven't Spss installed on their computer.
>>
>> I'm particulary interested to hear about the experience of former strong
>> Spss users who decided to switch to Stata. Beside the fact Stata has much
>> more statistical procedures, is more powerful, and is much less expensive
>> to buy (as we don't have to purchase add-on modules to get "a complete
> set"
>> of statistical procedures), for what reasons did you decide to do so ? I
>> would be very grateful if you could give me a few reasons that could help
>> me to convince the administration department here to purchase Stata
> instead
>> of the next release of Spss (version 18.0)
>>
>> Thank you very much.
>>
>> Kind regards,
>>
>> P.S. Sincere apologies for the very bad English grammar and syntax.
>>
>> Yves Therriault, Ph. D.
>> Agent de recherche
>> Surveillance de l'état de santé de la population (Santé publique)
>> Direction de la planification, des ressources informationnelles et
>> financières
>> Agence de la santé et des services sociaux de la Côte-Nord
>> Téléphone (418) 589-9845 Poste 2312 ; Téléc. (418) 589-8574
>> Courriel : [email protected]
>>
>>
>> *
>> * For searches and help try:
>> * http://www.stata.com/help.cgi?search
>> * http://www.stata.com/support/statalist/faq
>> * http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/
>>
>>
>> *
>> * For searches and help try:
>> * http://www.stata.com/help.cgi?search
>> * http://www.stata.com/support/statalist/faq
>> * http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/
>>
>
>
>
> --
> HUANG Ronggui, Wincent
> PhD Candidate
> Dept of Public and Social Administration
> City University of Hong Kong
> Home page: http://asrr.r-forge.r-project.org/rghuang.html
>
> *
> * For searches and help try:
> * http://www.stata.com/help.cgi?search
> * http://www.stata.com/support/statalist/faq
> * http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/
>
>
> *
> * For searches and help try:
> * http://www.stata.com/help.cgi?search
> * http://www.stata.com/support/statalist/faq
> * http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/
>
--
HUANG Ronggui, Wincent
PhD Candidate
Dept of Public and Social Administration
City University of Hong Kong
Home page: http://asrr.r-forge.r-project.org/rghuang.html
*
* For searches and help try:
* http://www.stata.com/help.cgi?search
* http://www.stata.com/support/statalist/faq
* http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/
