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st: Re: Your paper on Stata,SAS and SPSS


From   "Michael N. Mitchell" <[email protected]>
To   John F Hall <[email protected]>
Subject   st: Re: Your paper on Stata,SAS and SPSS
Date   Tue, 10 Aug 2010 02:25:47 -0700

Dear All

The reply that you read from me was written privately from myself to John Hall. I wanted to offer encouragement, information and advice after his initial email contacting me. I had no idea that my personal email to him would be reposted without my permission to both the SPSSX list and Statalist. While I do not feel that anything in my email was particularly unfit for public distribution, it is not the sort of information I would have voluntarily shared publicly and kindly request that people treat that as a misdirected email that should not have been sent, is best ignored, and certainly not forwarded.

While I admire the spirit of trying to join forces over common issues between the list, I think it violates the spirit and perhaps letter of the FAQs governing the lists to reproduce private conversations without permission. There is plenty of common ground to be found from public statements and public dialogue.

Warmest regards,

Michael N. Mitchell
Data Management Using Stata      - http://www.stata.com/bookstore/dmus.html
A Visual Guide to Stata Graphics - http://www.stata.com/bookstore/vgsg.html
Stata tidbit of the week         - http://www.MichaelNormanMitchell.com



On 2010-08-10 2.02 AM, John F Hall wrote:
Michael

Thanks for your prompt and appreciative reply.

For the kind of students I used to teach (no previous computing,
statistics (or even much maths) I'm still not convinced about Stata.
Most of them came from backgrounds in sociology and related subjects and
Stata seems to me to be heavily statistical. From the syntax examples I
have seen in Stata, they would be easily put off. However, modern
students are very different: all have their own computers or laptops and
I'm targeting the ones with PCs, Windows and Word (those with Mac and
Linux will have to wait for someone to convert my tutorials, but there's
nothing to stop them having a quick peep).

I can see why some people in "survey research methods" are switching,
but they have a very narrow definition and they're more into the
statistical aspects such as sampling bias, non-response etc, rather than
the substance of the survey. In the UK that has always been a major
difference in the definition of "survey methods". It's unfortunate (a
bit like the false distinction between qualitative and quantitative) but
I'm afraid technique currently has dominance over content in some quarters.

There has also been an interesting exchange between a bunch of Brits on
the relationship of the then Social Science Research Council (funding
agency) to the development of quantitative methods, with special
reference to sociology. Jennifer Platt (Emeritus Prof of Sociology,
Sussex) is the official historian of the Briitish Sociological
Association and recently presented a paper at the World Congress of
Sociology, Gothenberg, in a session for the Resarch Cttee on the History
of Sociology about deliberate attempts to change the direction of
sociology. She made the mistake of contacting me (in my capacity as
Editor of Quantitative Sociology Newsletter, which ceased publication in
1984). I haven't seen her for 20 years, but I have a vivid (if not
always 100% accurate) memory and managed to track down most of the
people who were active in promoting or enabling quantitative methods
and/or computing in sociological research in the UK in the 1970s. Poor
Jennifer is now buried in mounds of fascinating, detailed and learned
reminiscences!

Part of this exchange had some snide references to "plumbers" (computer
and statistics people) who could be called in to help out if thought
necessary by the superior intellects of "sociologists". I retorted, "The
late Angus Campbell (Director of ISR, Ann Arbor) once remarked to me
that you wouldn't expect a chemist to work without knowing how to put a
retort stand and tubes together, so why should sociologists not be
expected to have at least a few basic technical skills? At PNL I used to
explain my job as teaching sociologists how to count. At both SSRC and
PNL I and my staff upset a lot of people by turning round jobs in 3 or 4
days (sometimes being specially called in) that they had been messing
about with (wasting taxpayers' money or funding agency's patience) for
months, if not years, too proud or ignorant to seek advice or
assistance: others were eternally grateful, but you can't please everyone."

There were also some snide comments about research units and centres
springing up like mushrooms to cream off research funds, but that's a
whole new story. If anyone's interested, I can forward the relevant
selections.

John Hall
http://surveyresearch.weebly.com


PS I've copied in parts of other mails so that you and others can make
sense of your reply.

----- Original Message ----- From: Michael N. Mitchell
To: [email protected]
Sent: Tuesday, August 10, 2010 4:41 AM
Subject: Re: Your paper on Stata,SAS and SPSS


Dear John

Thank you so much for your email. My apologies for my delay, I have been
buried with
many things, including focusing my efforts on my book writing.

I am delighted that you have been engaging this issue of Stata and SPSS
and have been
fostering some cross communication of the communities via the SPSSX and
Statalist
listservers. Having used both packages for many years and having
followed each list for
quite a while, I know how each community can be very isolated from one
another. And, I
especially understand the issues that the SPSS folks are dealing with
and commenting upon.
That is part of the reason for the technical report that I wrote, trying
to help people
take a wider view of what is available. For those who have access to
multiple packages, to
encourage them to use the best of each tools from each package, and for
those who are
using a single package, to consider the alternatives and to consider
whether you might
want to make the effort to switch to another that might, in the long
run, serve you better
than the package that you know. At my work, I have had multiple people
make the switch
from SPSS to Stata and very quickly they do not look back. And, the cost
difference is
astounding. For the price we pay for one SAS license or the cost of
about 2 SPSS licenses
we get about 30 Stata licenses.

I am no longer with UCLA so cannot assist with "web link exchanges", but
I am sure that
the UCLA stat group would be very interested in this. You can write to
them at
[email protected] .

Warmest regards,

Michael N. Mitchell
Data Management Using Stata - http://www.stata.com/bookstore/dmus.html
A Visual Guide to Stata Graphics - http://www.stata.com/bookstore/vgsg.html
Stata tidbit of the week - http://www.MichaelNormanMitchell.com



On 2010-08-05 10.31 PM, [email protected] wrote:
Michael

to A desperate user in Spain whose university will discontinue SPSS 15
next year and not rplace it. She started a huge and ferocious debate
on the on the SPSSX listserver about IBM/SPSS business models etc. In
a reply someone just posted the link to your paper.

I haven't worked through it yet, but from the thoughts in your
abstract and acknowledgments I detect a kindred spirit working in
familiar territory.

I have used SPSS on dozens of surveys and thousands of queries since
1972 and am currently working on a stack of learning materials from
the postgraduate Survey Analysis Workshop (part-time, evening) I
designed and taught from 1976 until I (early) retired in 1992.

These were for various releases of SPSS on a range of machines
culminating in SPSS-X 4 on a Vax cluster. Since 2006 I have been
updating and expending these to use with SPSS for Windows on a PC
(which involves conversion from WordStar4 to Word and a switch from
DOS to Windows, neither of which I had ever used before).

Since September last year I have been developing a new website and
have now uploaded a substantial body of entry-level SPSS tutorials,
exercises and specimen answers. They use syntax in preference to the
drop-down menus, but many examples are also repeated using the menus.
They are oriented towards survey research rather than statistics and
are aimed at teachers, researchers and students with little or no
previous experience of statistics (a sort of "Clod's Guide to Survey
Analysis Using SPSS"). So far have avoided using a single equation,
but that may have to come when I get round to explaining inferential
statistics in the later stages of the course.

There are many SPSS courses around, but mine is different, and perhaps
more fun. The website is http://surveyresearch.weebly.com/index.html
and as well as SPSS it it also carries a wealth of research reports
and other materials.

Many of my colleagues in the UK are now switching to Stata, but I
think SPSS is far more suited to the kind of material I'm handling.
However, I'd be interested in seeing parallel Stata syntax and output
for some of my examples.

I already have a link to ATS on my SPSS intros and tutorials page
http://surveyresearch.weebly.com/spss-intros-and-tutorials.html. Once
I've had a look at your paper, would you be happy for me to add a link
to it from my site?

Finally, there's an account of how I got into all this in my Old Dog,
Old Tricks presentation
(http://surveyresearch.weebly.com/7-old-dog-old-tricks.html) and the
first slide show is fun. There are also two extended critical reviews
of Julie Pallant's "SPSS Survival Manual" (2001 and 2005, both
different) on http://surveyresearch.weebly.com/8-spss-text-books.html

Regards
John Hall

----- Original Message ----- From: John F Hall
To: Various people in computing, stats and quant method in sociology
Sent: Saturday, August 07, 2010 9:33 AM
Subject: SPSS, SAS and Stata


I've read through the Mitchell article and it is more relevant to
statististical aspects of surveys than to the sorts of things I cover in
my tutorials. It's very thorough, but there are no tables or figures
showing direct comparisons of syntax or output from SPSS, SAS and Stata.
I'll add a link from my site, but I already have one to ATS at UCLA.

John Hall
http://surveyresearch.weebly.com



----- Original Message ----- From: John F Hall
To: Reason Dave
Cc: Various people in computing, stats and quant method in
sociologySent: Friday, August 06, 2010 6:31 PM
Subject: Sociologists and plumbers


Dave

Just came across this opening paragraph in an article (link posted to
SPSSX listserver by Dirk Enzmann)

There's huge debate going on about the relative merits of SPSS vs Stata
and R, much of it an attack on the IBM/SPSS business model which is
beginning to put SPSS out of the reach of many universities as well as
students. Many users are now switching to Stata, thus losing a whole
generation of students and future users forever. There are some
heartbreaking, extensive, thoughtful and constructive contributions on
the thread inexpensive 'home' version? started by Peter Neenan
[email protected]

Mitchell, M. N. (2005). Strategically using General Purpose Statistics
Packages: A Look at Stata, SAS and
SPSS (Technical Report Series, Report Number 1, Version Number 1).
Statistical Consulting Group:
UCLA Academic Technology Services. Available at
http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/technicalreports/

This report describes my experiences using statistical packages over the
last 20+ years, including my ex-
periences as a statistical consultant at UCLA for more than 11 years. As
a statistical consultant, I have
worked with thousands of researchers and have worked with well over a
dozen packages. In any given day,
I bounce from helping people using Stata, then SAS, then SPSS, or Mplus,
perhaps HLM, maybe LogXact,
perhaps LatentGOLD, maybe MLwiN and so forth. I have seen how certain
packages have certain strengths
and others have certain weaknesses, and that these strengths and
weaknesses fall along a large number of
dimensions. I have come to believe that data analysts are like
carpenters and that statistical software makes
up the tools that we use. A carpenter would not buy a screwdriver and
conclude that his or her toolkit
is complete. Likewise, as data analysts, we may need to draw upon
multiple tools (statistical packages) to
form a complete toolkit based on the kind of work each of us performs.

The article was updated in 2007: he's still working at UCLA and is a
regular contributor to Stata listerver. I thought the carpenter analogy
appropriate, given your remarks about plumbers and sociologists. From
the abstract and his acknowledgments, I detect a kindred spirit working
in an environment not unlike SSRC and PNL.

John

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