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Re: st: RE: Stata 9 announcement


From   Nick Winter <[email protected]>
To   [email protected]
Subject   Re: st: RE: Stata 9 announcement
Date   Tue, 05 Apr 2005 10:27:04 -0400

My $0.02.

My guess is that part of the lack of immediate discussion has to do with the nature of the stuff that's new. The biggest thing in 8.0 to my mind (and certainly the most anticipated) was the new graphics, which could generate immediate discussion...similarly the GUI was something everyone could express an opinion (pretty divided as I recall, though once people have seen it they seem less opposed, probably because the GUI actually ends up emphasizing Stata's command-line orientation).

For 9.0, much of the update seems statistical--I'm sure lots of people are excited about the mixed models, multivariate stats, MNProbit, and seemingly fully redesiged survey stuff (although I'm slightly sad to see my -svr- suite made obsolete!)...but there is not much to say on-list other than "I can't wait" and/or "I hope that the new command X has feature Y implemented in a way that makes it easy for me to use"

Personally, I think some of the best improvements are in the unification of the command-prefix approach. One of Stata's strengths has always been the unified command structure across all sorts of modelling strategy; in this context things like boostrap, survey estimation, and so on were a bit ad hoc. Now those seem all to be unified, with hooks to make them easily integrated into user-written programs. Similarly, the unified post-estimation stuff looks to be nice. I think that will be pretty cool once people start making use of them.

I'm also looking forward to multiple graph windows--I think that will people much more likely to use Stata graphics for more exploratory data analysis (although another generation or two of faster processors will help there too).

It's hard to say what Mata will hold . . . but I'll bet quite a bit.

--Nick

At 09:58 AM 4/5/2005 -0400, you wrote:

It is with some curiosity that I note that previous such announcements
have led to an immediate and wide-ranging discussion on Statalist,
yet this message was met with thunderous silence.  My question is why?

  . Perhaps the time interval between Stata 8 and Stata 9 was too short?

  . Perhaps we have yet to absorb all the new features in 8 and now we
    are faced with 9?

  . Perhaps what 9 offers is not of interest?

  . Or is it the complexity of the new offerings that stagger us into
    silence?

  . Or the cost of the upgrade?

Regardless, I'm amazed that Bill's announcement has, so far, led to only
one comment on this list. I know I will be upgrading because some (though
not all) of the new offerings are of interest to me and I don't mind
supporting a company that does such a good job of supporting its users.

But I will also note that all of the above bullets are part and parcel of
My reaction to Stata 9's announcement.

So where do you stand?
--------------------------------------------------------
Nicholas Winter 607.255.8819 t
Assistant Professor 607.255.4530 f
Department of Government [email protected] e
308 White Hall falcon.arts.cornell.edu/nw53 w
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY 14853-4601

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