The question was not what is the best program for experienced political
scientists. It was about the differences in the programs, and I tried to
lay that out as a user and purchaser of the programs.
While Jim and I agree (apparently) that R is the best program to learn,
it's also the least accessible because it takes effort and time to
learn. We gain knowledge of each program through experience, and R is a
harder program to use and experience. Most graduate students I know,
myself included, slogged through and learned R on our own because we
anticipate using it in the future. But -- heresy! -- we had to devote
some of our study time to theory and research as well as methodology.
I think SPSS and Stata have value for most students. Most profs don't
want to wait for students to become proficient with R to produce a
paper, so SPSS and Stata serve quite well. You learn R for just the
reasons Jim stated, expanded options and flexibility. It's been a
pleasure recently to see books being published that teach statistical
analysis through R. That's a shortcut to R for most grad students who
use these books.
I'll even defend "point and click," -- to a point. It's helpful
especially when you use it to set up graphics. I really don't see value
in spending a whole lot of time programming the graphics. Grad students
don't have a lot of time, and frankly, the graphic artists are better
with the graphs and tables.
Finally, a lot of the secondary data sets we students use must be
converted into CSV format for use in R. Sometimes its easy to do,
sometimes it's not. Just depends on how much I can afford to spend this
semester on programs to do the conversion. Comprendo?
Walt
Walt
-----Original Message-----
From: Political Methodology Society [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of Jim Battista
Sent: Thursday, October 05, 2006 11:22 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [POLMETH] R vs. Stata vs. SPSS
Walt Borges wrote:
> From an analysis standpoint, and as someone who learned all these
> programs over the last two years, I would list the pros and cons thus:
>
> SPSS -- pro: Good point and click features
Point and click features are the work of the devil and are avoided by
all right-thinking, non-muddleheaded people. Here's where vast hordes
of grad students start thinking I'm some sort of luddite who still runs
DRDOS and who loves nothing better than entering an obscure series of
command switches.
But you only like point-and-click features because they haven't bitten
you in the ass yet. They will, just as surely as the equation editor in
Word will. You're going to be doing some sort of analysis and have
something really cool that you're utterly unable to replicate because
you got there by some series of mouse clicks.
Stored programs are your friend.
> STATA --
> con: Inevitably you will need to deal with a data or
> graphics issue that will send you to the seven-volume manual.
> Someone in the department better have one you can use,
> because it's real expensive. The good news is
> that you will probably find the instructions there
> and understand them.
I don't have the manuals, but have found the answers to all my problems
so far just by using search engines.
> R -- con:
> Importing data sets (major pain in the butt).
Nah. R imports CSV files just fine.
And along with doing your real work with stored programs, you should be
backing up your data as a CSV or other simple text format on a regular
basis.
There's no guarantee at all that the version of your favorite software
in 2015 will be able to read files from 2006. If anything, the record
of statistical software is apocalyptically bad with respect to
interoperability of data files even between contemporaneous versions for
different OSes.
But any software worth more than swearing at and spitting on will be
able to read a CSV or some other simply formatted ASCII file now, and in
2015, and for ever and ever amen. It's a dead easy way to keep your
data safe, and you want your data safe.
Also, you kids get off my lawn or I shall strike you with my cane most
severely.
Best,
Jim Battista
[log in to unmask]
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