st: RE: Popularity of R, SAS, SPSS, Stata...

["Nick Cox" <n.j.cox@durham.ac.uk>]

I've come late to this thread, but a few basic points seem worth making:


1. Downloads of user-written software from SSC are public and part of
the evidence. But -- especially for a non-Stata audience -- it needs to
be clear that 

a. user-written programs are often downloaded from the Stata Journal and
Stata Technical Bulletin archives and from users' own websites too 

b. Stata is much more than the sum of its user-written programs. Some
fraction unknown to me of Stata users never use user-written programs. 

2. It is easy for anyone to download R out of curiosity. I've done it
several times but I remain a very occasional user. Conversely, buying a
package out of curiosity seems distinctly less likely, although many
people probably use two or more packages so long as someone else
(usually an employer) pays. 

Still, so long as each measure is treated cautiously as a proxy, then
this kind of discussion remains interesting. But somehow I keep thinking
of my favourite daily newspaper, last time I looked still the second
least popular in Britain. Popularity isn't everything..... 

Nick 
n.j.cox@durham.ac.uk 

Muenchen, Robert A (Bob)

I've been fiddling around with various ways to estimate the popularity
of R, SAS, SPSS, Stata, JMP, Minitab, Statistica, Systat, BMDP, S-PLUS,
R-PLUS and Revolution R. It's not an easy task. You can see what I've
come up with so far at http://r4stats.com/popularity . I'm sure people
will have plenty of ideas on how to improve this, so please let me know
what you think.


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