[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 David Winsemius
>Sent: Sunday, June 20, 2010 1:05 PM
>To: Stefan Grosse
>Cc: r-help at r-project.org
>Subject: Re: [R] Popularity of R, SAS, SPSS, Stata...
>
>
>On Jun 20, 2010, at 10:24 AM, Stefan Grosse wrote:
>
>> 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. 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.
>
>I suspect proponents of their use would actively dispute the "very
>specialized" description.

Here at UT SPSS is dominant across a wide range of departments with
around 3,600 users. The older professors never stopped programming in it
while the many programming-phobic students love its point-and-click
interface. SAS is also used widely with about 800 users, many of them
caused by class requirements. When it comes to dissertation time, many
switch over to SPSS. Stata has around 120 concentrated in just a few
departments. With R it's hard to tell as we don't get local counts and R
users tend to not need much consulting support.

Cheers,
Bob

>
>> 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.
>
>I was under the impression that both SAS and Stata actively support
>their two mailing lists, but the SAS FAQ disputes this impression
>regarding SAS.
>
>>
>> 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.
>
>Certainly there are additional factors that might influence the
>absolute numbers of posting to a particular mailing list. The SAS
>mailing list/newsgroup, SAS-L/comp.soft-sys.sas, has a well-
>established Internet presence. Each one probably has a particular
>culture. (I was stunned to see the low number of daily posts to
>comp.soft-sys.sas when I just looked at the last week on
>GoogelGroups.) I didn't think either the SAS or the Stata lists had
>any sort of published or informal effort to steer users in the
>direction of R-ing the FM, searching-before-posting, or admonishments
>to RT-FAQ.  However, now that I look, it does appear that the
>Statalist FAQ  makes an effort similar to that of the r-help Posting
>Guide. There may be differences in the degree and clarity of the
>documentation as well. The Stata distribution includes a medium-sized
>library. All of that said, ..., the relative frequency of postings
>would seem to less subject to such influences.
>
>The SAS curve with its peak in 2006-2008 and significantly lower
>numbers in more recent years contrasted with the steady increase in R
>and Stata would seem to reflect a material shift. Agreed, you cannot
>say that R passed SAS in number of active users, or that SAS has the
>same number of users as Stata. The flatness of SPSS also appears
>meaningful.  And within the R/S world the differences in the activity
>on Snews and rhelp are likewise pretty dramatic.
>
>--
>
>David Winsemius, MD
>West Hartford, CT
>
>______________________________________________
>R-help at r-project.org mailing list
>https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
>PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-
>guide.html
>and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.