[R] Popularity of R, SAS, SPSS, Stata...

[Muenchen, Robert A (Bob)]

>-----Original Message-----
>From: r-help-bounces at r-project.org
[mailto:r-help-bounces at r-project.org]
>On Behalf Of Stefan Grosse
>Sent: Sunday, June 20, 2010 10:25 AM
>To: r-help at r-project.org
>Subject: Re: [R] Popularity of R, SAS, SPSS, Stata...
>
>Am 20.06.2010 15:31, schrieb Muenchen, Robert A (Bob):
>
>> I've been fiddling around with various ways to estimate the
popularity
>> of R, SAS, SPSS, Stata, JMP, Minitab, Statistica, Systat, BMDP, S-
>PLUS,
>> R-PLUS and Revolution R. It's not an easy task. You can see what I've
>> come up with so far at http://r4stats.com/popularity . I'm sure
people
>> will have plenty of ideas on how to improve this, so please let me
>know
>> what you think.
>
>Your analysis is quite web-based. But to define what popular means is -
>I believe - hard. 

Stefan,

I agree with all your points. What I have so far is nowhere near the big
picture, but it's a start. When you install some software it asks if you
mind it reporting usage stats back to its home site. I know that sort of
thing has been discussed before on R-help. I'd love to see that added so
we would have a better estimate of R's user base. 

Cheers, 
Bob


>R is open source and very broad in its different
>applications so of course it generates much more e-mail and web traffic
>because there are many different uses and users.
>
>SPSS and Stata for example are closed and very specialized. You get
>support also directly from the company and do not necessarily need a
>mailing list. Does this mean that they are less popular? I'd say no.
>
>So the question I would raise here is whether it is a fair comparison?
>I know that is a sufficient statistics-subset like panel econometrics
>Stata is by far leading and for time series econometrics Eviews, Gauss
>in research. I would say that in the industry that I know plus in
>econometrics research those programs are much more widespread or
>"popular". To measure their popularity I would say a
>industry-and-education-wide-questionnaire should be used.
>
>Plus it is not sufficient so I would also name Matlab, Gauss, Ox,
Eviews
>from the areas of my "interest" (econometrics) as "popular" proprietary
>software.
>
>I do not deny that R is becoming more popular, but I doubt whether
>mailing lists and search requests are enough to prove this hypothesis.
>
>My 2cents
>Stefan
>
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