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

[Richard Williams <richardwilliams.ndu@gmail.com>]

No doubt about it, much of the world prefers SPSS or SAS. But as a 
student argued to me a few years ago, I either needed to teach SPSS 
more or teach it less. I opted for less, partly because I didn't want 
to go to the hassle of making sure that my old examples hadn't been 
zapped by the latest release of the program. Luckily, I think most 
academics in Sociology can get by with only Stata. And if they can't 
it isn't that hard to point, click, point, click. Although it is 
incredibly tedious and boring to do so, and also frustrating when the 
feature you want either doesn't exist or is buried in the menus somewhere.

At 09:42 AM 3/19/2013, Clive Nicholas wrote:
> 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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-------------------------------------------
Richard Williams, Notre Dame Dept of Sociology
OFFICE: (574)631-6668, (574)631-6463
HOME:   (574)289-5227
EMAIL:  Richard.A.Williams.5@ND.Edu
WWW:    http://www.nd.edu/~rwilliam

*
*   For searches and help try:
*   http://www.stata.com/help.cgi?search
*   http://www.stata.com/support/faqs/resources/statalist-faq/
*   http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/