re: Re: st: Popularity of R, SAS, SPSS, Stata, Statistica, S-PLUS updated

[Christopher Baum <kit.baum@bc.edu>]

<>
Nick Cox pointed out, in re "Popularity",

In this document there is a repeated misunderstanding. Downloads from
SSC (repec), as members of this list will generally know, are only one
way of downloading user-written packages for Stata. Indeed another
main way, through the Stata Journal and Stata Technical Bulletin
websites, predates SSC. Data for such downloads are proprietary to
StataCorp. It's my guess that they are easily the same order of
magnitude as SSC downloads.


Actually, it is worse than that. The Muenchen document states

Similar figures for downloads of Stata add-ons (not Stata itself) are available at http://logec.repec.org/scripts/itemstat.pf?type=redif-software.  However, both R and Stata have other significant repositories that do not provide such counts. 

This is quite misleading. The LogEc count referred to by that URL is the count of .ado, .hlp, .sthlp, .mlib files downloaded from the SSC Archive via web browser links. On each web browser page, users are strongly encouraged NOT to download software this way (and that it will probably fail if they are Windows users). Nevertheless, a nontrivial number do so; this statistic might be termed the 'bozo count'. But those counts are a serious underestimate of download activity from the SSC Archive, as the recommended technique to perform these downloads is from within Stata using the -ssc- command, and a much larger number of Stata users download using this recommendation. Such downloads are not tracked by RePEc services, but they are tracked by the web server which satisfies Stata's requests. So the URL above should be removed from the "Popularity" document. A URL which gives a snapshot of download activity over a recent month is

http://fmwww.bc.edu/fmrc/reports/report.ssc.html

Much more readable stats are available from within Stata, using -ssc hot-, but that of course requires that you use Stata. 

Nick's point -- that downloads of user-written software involve the SJ/STB Archive, the UCLA archive and various users' sites -- is of course well taken.

Kit

Kit Baum   |   Boston College Economics and DIW Berlin   |   http://ideas.repec.org/e/pba1.html
An Introduction to Stata Programming   |   http://www.stata-press.com/books/isp.html
An Introduction to Modern Econometrics Using Stata   |   http://www.stata-press.com/books/imeus.html


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