RE: st: RE: (New) Popularity of R, SAS, SPSS, Stata...

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

I don't want to seem pugnacious, but "similar" remains a weasel word. 

As I understand it:

Bioconductor downloads are some fraction, unknown and also variable in
time, of user-written R material. 

SSC downloads are some fraction, unknown and also variable in time, of
user-written Stata material.

If that counts as "similar", so be it. And these facts will be familiar
to those familiar with R and Stata. But the underlying fractions and
time dependence could be very different. 

I know we are just talking proxies here, and it's tedious to read
through lots of qualifications and caveats, but they remain essential
for a proper understanding here. 

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

Muenchen, Robert A (Bob)

I said that the downloads on that link are similar to those of
Bioconductor. It's similar in that they contain only add-ons. Neither
the Bioconductor site nor SSC contain the main products, R and Stata,
respectively. But I can see that people who don't know Bioconductor
would have no way of knowing that. I've changed that sentence to clarify
it:

"Similar figures for downloads of Stata add-ons (not Stata itself) are
available at
http://logec.repec.org/scripts/itemstat.pf?type=redif-software.";  

Nick Cox

>This document repeats a misconception already corrected publicly
>
><http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/lwgate/STATALIST/archives/statalis
t
>.1006/date/article-1172.html>
>
>-- namely that SSC downloads are in some sense equivalent to Stata
>downloads. Downloads from Stata's own website and from user-maintained
>sites other than SSC are not included in SSC data. I don't have any
>figures for Bob, but I am confident that SSC data alone greatly
>underestimate download activity. You only have to realise that all
>-update-s are excluded to see that. Of course, SSC data are of interest
>in their own right, but at best they are a proxy for Stata activity in
>total.


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