Re: st: Stata and R

[David Airey <david.airey@vanderbilt.edu>]

.

Maybe my statement simply reflects greater familiarity with Stata than  
R. But I have given R a fair amount of time, and feel I picked up  
Stata more quickly and retained it better. When I first bought Stata,  
I gave couple months of study to the user guide, to select entries  
(regress, anova, logit, xtgee), and a programming course. I have give  
about the same time now to R, and I have successfully used it with the  
shapes package, some genetics packages, and with the commands nls()  
and nlme() for pharmacological data.

I think the Stata documentation is better. People in the clinic have  
said they find it hard to find the right documentation in R as they  
need it, and it tends to be technical rather than explanatory. I  
agree. However, a great number of R books have now been published,  
filling in all levels of expertise. However, you will spend just as  
much on those texts as on Stata documentation.

I have a better time of it with Stata graphics. I think graphics in  
Stata are now just as good as R, maybe better with version 10. At the  
last R meeting there were difficulties with graphics device aspect  
ratio and Sweave that were not resolved after 20 minutes of fiddling  
by the expert. Go figure. One the other hand, Sweave is a good reason  
to use R. Having one file that contains your R code, and your results  
write up, that produces a final PDF report, is smart reproducible  
research:

http://biostat.mc.vanderbilt.edu/twiki/pub/Main/TheresaScott/Reproducible.Research.TAScott.pdf

My impression also may be tainted by what our R clinic is all about:  
helping people at their wits end. I don't attend an R conquests clinic.

-Dave



On May 17, 2008, at 7:15 PM, ronggui wrote:


> On Fri, May 16, 2008 at 10:40 PM, david.airey@Vanderbilt.Edu
> <david.airey@vanderbilt.edu> wrote:
> > Just about every other week I drop into our R clinic for a coffee
> > break to listen to people's questions and maybe ask one myself. The
> > clinic is about general use questions, not especially about
> > Bioconductor packages, which is one reason to use R. The clinic is  
> > run
> > by a very capable R expert. Originally I started going to the clinic
> > thinking to myself that well, maybe this would be the last version of
> > Stata I would buy, because R has come miles in development and
> > documentation. More often than not, however, I conclude the opposite,
> > and continue to regularly use Stata, thinking there is value is good
> > commercial products.
> I am curious about why you come to such an conclusion?
>
> Best
>
> > One interesting function in R that I can't find in Stata is Frank
> > Harrell's nomogram function in the Design package, which essentially
> > is a graphical alternative to outreg or estout.
> >
> > http://lib.stat.cmu.edu/S/Harrell/help/Design/html/nomogram.html
> >
> > http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~cook/movabletype/archives/2006/05/nomograms.html
> >
> > -Dave
> > *
> > *   For searches and help try:
> > *   http://www.stata.com/support/faqs/res/findit.html
> > *   http://www.stata.com/support/statalist/faq
> > *   http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/
> >
> > _____________________________________________________________________
> > Mensaje analizado y protegido por Telefonica Empresas
> > *
> > *   For searches and help try:
> > *   http://www.stata.com/support/faqs/res/findit.html
> > *   http://www.stata.com/support/statalist/faq
> > *   http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/
> >
> > Privileged, confidential or patient identifiable information may be  
> > contained in this message. This information is meant only for the  
> > use of the intended recipients. If you are not the intended  
> > recipient, or if the message has been addressed to you in error, do  
> > not read, disclose, reproduce, distribute, disseminate or otherwise  
> > use this transmission. Instead, please notify the sender by reply e- 
> > mail, and then destroy all copies of the message and any attachments.
> >
> > *
> > *   For searches and help try:
> > *   http://www.stata.com/support/faqs/res/findit.html
> > *   http://www.stata.com/support/statalist/faq
> > *   http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/
>
>
> --
> HUANG Ronggui, Wincent http://ronggui.huang.googlepages.com/
> Bachelor of Social Work, Fudan University, China
> Master of sociology, Fudan University, China
> Ph.D. Candidate, CityU of HK.
> *
> *   For searches and help try:
> *   http://www.stata.com/support/faqs/res/findit.html
> *   http://www.stata.com/support/statalist/faq
> *   http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/
*
*   For searches and help try:
*   http://www.stata.com/support/faqs/res/findit.html
*   http://www.stata.com/support/statalist/faq
*   http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/