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RE: Re: st: Popularity of R, SAS, SPSS, Stata, Statistica, S-PLUS updated


From   "Muenchen, Robert A (Bob)" <[email protected]>
To   "[email protected]" <[email protected]>
Subject   RE: Re: st: Popularity of R, SAS, SPSS, Stata, Statistica, S-PLUS updated
Date   Fri, 25 Mar 2011 14:52:40 +0000

Nick, yes, changes of names, package splits & mergers, and just obsolete stuff hanging about are all issues with the R data. There are also duplicates across the repositories that I eliminate in my program. 

If anyone can come up with an easy way for me to collect data on a regular basis (I do have a copy of Stata if a program would work) I would definitely include it in future updates. Thanks, Bob

>-----Original Message-----
>From: [email protected] [mailto:owner-
>[email protected]] On Behalf Of Nick Cox
>Sent: Friday, March 25, 2011 10:14 AM
>To: [email protected]
>Subject: Re: Re: st: Popularity of R, SAS, SPSS, Stata, Statistica, S-PLUS updated
>
>I don't have similar data. In principle, all the packages published through the Stata
>Technical Bulletin and the Stata Journal are documented in various stata*.key
>files included with any Stata installation. You could get crude or more accurate
>estimates depending how much work you put into their processing. Details to
>consider include (and this list is just what springs to mind)
>
>1. Periodic updates to particular packages.
>
>2. Adoption by official Stata of user-written commands.
>
>3. Changes of name.
>
>4. The history of these sources goes back to 1991, so some are obsolete or
>deadwood (although most would still work!).
>
>5. Duplications between SJ/STB and SSC.
>
>All that leaves untouched the question of users' individual or institutional sites.
>
>My own guess is that the number of packages on SSC is perhaps half of the total.
>
>Nick
>
>On Fri, Mar 25, 2011 at 1:52 PM, Muenchen, Robert A (Bob)
><[email protected]> wrote:
>> That's very helpful information. I've switched the URL to point to:
>> http://fmwww.bc.edu/fmrc/reports/report.ssc.html
>>
>> That link has a rich set of information regarding downloads: hourly, daily,
>weekly.  Is yearly download data available? If it is, it would make a great addition
>to the paper.
>>
>> Are there counts of the total packages there now? By year?
>>
>> Does anyone know what percent of the total of the main repositories are at
>SSC? To find equivalent info for R I chose only the biggest, CRAN, and ran a
>program to count the unique package names (2,849 on 3/25). I then selected all 9
>major repositories and ran it again (4,338). So while yearly total number of R
>packages is known only for CRAN, we can estimate that the growth curve shown
>in Figure 9 (http://r4stats.com/popularity) is 66% of the total. Individuals still
>have their own sets, but probably a relatively small number. I would *love* to
>have similar data for Stata!
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Bob
>>
>>>-----Original Message-----
>>>From: [email protected] [mailto:owner-
>>>[email protected]] On Behalf Of Christopher Baum
>>>Sent: Wednesday, March 23, 2011 1:27 PM
>>>To: [email protected]
>>>Subject: re: Re: st: Popularity of R, SAS, SPSS, Stata, Statistica,
>>>S-PLUS updated
>>>
>>><>
>>>Nick Cox pointed out, in re "Popularity",
>>>
>>>In this document there is a repeated misunderstanding. Downloads from
>>>SSC (repec), as members of this list will generally know, are only one
>>>way of downloading user-written packages for Stata. Indeed another
>>>main way, through the Stata Journal and Stata Technical Bulletin
>>>websites, predates SSC. Data for such downloads are proprietary to
>>>StataCorp. It's my guess that they are easily the same order of magnitude as
>SSC downloads.
>>>
>>>
>>>Actually, it is worse than that. The Muenchen document states
>>>
>>>Similar figures for downloads of Stata add-ons (not Stata itself) are
>>>available at
>>>http://logec.repec.org/scripts/itemstat.pf?type=redif-software.  However,
>both R and Stata have other significant repositories that do not provide such
>counts.
>>>
>>>This is quite misleading. The LogEc count referred to by that URL is
>>>the count of .ado, .hlp, .sthlp, .mlib files downloaded from the SSC
>>>Archive via web browser links. On each web browser page, users are
>>>strongly encouraged NOT to download software this way (and that it
>>>will probably fail if they are Windows users). Nevertheless, a
>>>nontrivial number do so; this statistic might be termed the 'bozo
>>>count'. But those counts are a serious underestimate of download
>>>activity from the SSC Archive, as the recommended technique to perform
>>>these downloads is from within Stata using the -ssc- command, and a
>>>much larger number of Stata users download using this recommendation.
>>>Such downloads are not tracked by RePEc services, but they are tracked
>>>by the web server which satisfies Stata's requests. So the URL above
>>>should be removed from the "Popularity" document. A URL which gives a
>>>snapshot of download activity over a recent month is
>>>
>>>http://fmwww.bc.edu/fmrc/reports/report.ssc.html
>>>
>>>Much more readable stats are available from within Stata, using -ssc
>>>hot-, but that of course requires that you use Stata.
>>>
>>>Nick's point -- that downloads of user-written software involve the
>>>SJ/STB Archive, the UCLA archive and various users' sites -- is of course well
>taken.
>>>
>
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