Stata vs. Statistica vs. Gauss vs. SPSS
Dragec
could someone explain differences between these softwares,
preferences, weakness. purposes. Who prefer which, mathematicians,
economists, physicists, sociologists, market researchers. I have
experience with Stata and I use it for econometric. In Stata I like
command line, programming ability, but I ask myself about others.
Thanks in advance.
Effiezal Wahab
U can run a search on wikipedia. There is a difference sheet.
Look it up.
You cannot compare GAUSS with SPSS.It is two totally different things.
Yes, of course u can still run OLS/2SLS etc on GAUSS, but you have to
write something. Not SPSS>
But what are you looking for?
For me :
Descptive (purely descirptive) :SPSS
Regressions/t-test the rest : EVIEWS or GRETL
Enuf for me!
Hope it helps dude!
Effiezal.
--
"An easy life is hard to find"
Effiezal Aswadi Abdul Wahab
PhD Student
Department Accounting and Finance
The University of Auckland Business School
Private Bag 92019
Auckland
New Zealand
0211157108(New Zealand)
09-3737599 x 89855(office)
Maarten buis
A nice comparison of Stata and SPSS (and SAS (and a bit of R)) can be
found here: http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/technicalreports/
Hope this helps,
Maarten
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Department of Social Research Methodology
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
Boelelaan 1081
1081 HV Amsterdam
The Netherlands
visiting address:
Buitenveldertselaan 3 (Metropolitan), room Z434
http://home.fsw.vu.nl/m.buis/
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Dragec
could someone explain differences between these softwares,
preferences, weakness. purposes. Who prefer which, mathematicians,
economists, physicists, sociologists, market researchers. I have
experience with Stata and I use it for econometric. In Stata I like
command line, programming ability, but I ask myself about others.
Thanks in advance.
mcap
The best thing is to get your hands on these packages and try them!
Or, you could speak to people who use the regularly. The debate can
get heated at times. Each system has its pros and cons. I have
experience with SPSS and limited experience with Stata - My
impressions.........
Stata - A great package. Command line syntax is intuitive and there
are menus for many features now. The menus have really improved. It
seems to be used mostly for biostatistics and epidemiology although I
have seen other uses. For epi in particular, there are features that
simply aren't found on any other package. The program is extremely
flexible. Anytime you need something you can alter the program files
(ado) or download one of many user written programs. The usergroup/
listserv is extremely active,- far more than any other. Post a
question and you will likely receive a few answers within hours.
Stata is also the cheapest of the three by far. All updates and
support are free - unlike SAS and SPSS. They also don't seem to add a
new version every year like SPSS does.
Some of the cons of Stata, as I see it, include the data management
features. The interface for the data editor could be better. The
graphics and output are poor. If you are posting into a word document
or something similar, SPSS, with it's pivot tables, is better.
Following what you have done, over a long project, also is a bit
cumbersome.
SPSS - I really like this package also and use it for most things. It
is the easiest to use of all the packages and the one most likely to
be used by non-epi and non-stat students. SPSS users are more likely
to be in psychology, social sciences, marketing, etc although there
are a fair number of stats people that use it as well. One if the
issues with SPSS is that the average user tends not to use the command
syntax or programmability. This is a huge mistake. Using the GUI is
very cumbersome and anyone who discusses SPSS without syntax has no
way near tapped the potential. SPSS excels at ANOVA and GLM type
stuff but lags far behind stata for logistic regression (although it
is getting better). Epi is much better in stata. I just went
through week long discussion with SPSS because I don't like the way it
calculates the relative risk. There are other minor annoyances such
as no weighted kappa.
SPSS's data editor interface is very advanced and the output is top
notch. You can pivot any output table and make a multitude of
adjustments. If putting your tables directly in documents or
presentations is the consideration, then this is a good choice.
Following your progress over the course of a long project is easy as
well both in terms of output and syntax.
You can use the programming language Python for really advanced
programming. You can use syntax and macros for lighter duties.
But...you can't get into the system files like you can in stata.
SPSS is expensive and they add new versions faster than you can keep
up. In addition, unless you have access to the graduate packs or a
lot of money, there are a lot of features that are not included with
the base. These include regression, advanced features, the tables
module (for advanced table features), missing values analysis, etc.
The grad pack is a good deal. The full program is really expensive by
the time you add modules.
The SPSS user group is great but it is far less active than the STATA
group.
Hope that helps!!!! It really depends on both your preferences and
the preferences of the people you work with. Although much better
with SPSS, I am often forced to switch when taking an epi course.
Marc