Re: st: STATA command equivalent to SPSS "aggregate"?

[Clive Nicholas <clivelists@googlemail.com>]

Richard Williams wrote:

[...]

> I used to be all SPSS and now I am pretty much all Stata. A lot of old SPSS
> notes have been moved to optional appendices in my course notes. However, I
> am wondering whether I should keep SPSS around at all, because I can't count
> on old SPSS commands to always work the same as they used to. I have this
> old SPSS program that does some major data manipulations and the stupid
> thing is giving me errors now. Eventually I have to either figure out how
> SPSS syntax has changed or rewrite the program using Stata.  Stata is much,
> much, much better about maintaining backward compatibility.

If you need to retain SPSS for teaching purposes (and let's face it,
why would you want it for anything else?), there's always GNU PSPP,
which I could download and install on my Kubuntu Linux system right
now if I wanted, but can't be bothered:

www.gnu.org/s/pspp/

It would be nice to dismiss SPSS out of hand, but here in Blighty,
you'll be surprised how many private companies casting their nets for
analysts and statisticians ask for skills and experience in SPSS, and
if it's not that, then it's SAS or SQL. They hardly ever ask for Stata
or R (which I now use these days along with -gretl-), and that's a
pity.

-- 
Clive Nicholas

"My colleagues in the social sciences talk a great deal about
methodology. I prefer to call it style." -- Freeman J. Dyson
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