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

[Nick Cox <njcoxstata@gmail.com>]

I don't have similar data. In principle, all the packages published
through the Stata Technical Bulletin and the Stata Journal are
documented in various stata*.key files included with any Stata
installation. You could get crude or more accurate estimates depending
how much work you put into their processing. Details to consider
include (and this list is just what springs to mind)

1. Periodic updates to particular packages.

2. Adoption by official Stata of user-written commands.

3. Changes of name.

4. The history of these sources goes back to 1991, so some are
obsolete or deadwood (although most would still work!).

5. Duplications between SJ/STB and SSC.

All that leaves untouched the question of users' individual or
institutional sites.

My own guess is that the number of packages on SSC is perhaps half of
the total.

Nick

On Fri, Mar 25, 2011 at 1:52 PM, Muenchen, Robert A (Bob)
<muenchen@utk.edu> wrote:
> That's very helpful information. I've switched the URL to point to:
> http://fmwww.bc.edu/fmrc/reports/report.ssc.html
>
> That link has a rich set of information regarding downloads: hourly, daily, weekly.  Is yearly download data available? If it is, it would make a great addition to the paper.
>
> Are there counts of the total packages there now? By year?
>
> Does anyone know what percent of the total of the main repositories are at SSC? To find equivalent info for R I chose only the biggest, CRAN, and ran a program to count the unique package names (2,849 on 3/25). I then selected all 9 major repositories and ran it again (4,338). So while yearly total number of R packages is known only for CRAN, we can estimate that the growth curve shown in Figure 9 (http://r4stats.com/popularity) is 66% of the total. Individuals still have their own sets, but probably a relatively small number. I would *love* to have similar data for Stata!
>
> Thanks,
> Bob
>
>>-----Original Message-----
>>From: owner-statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu [mailto:owner-
>>statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu] On Behalf Of Christopher Baum
>>Sent: Wednesday, March 23, 2011 1:27 PM
>>To: statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu
>>Subject: re: Re: st: Popularity of R, SAS, SPSS, Stata, Statistica, S-PLUS updated
>>
>><>
>>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.
>>

*
*   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/