What Statistics Software do you recommend?

[knattlhuber]

I really need SAS. I tried to install it a year ago but never got it to work. I then worked a bit with SAS in Virtualbox but eventually left Ubuntu again for XP.
I am a doctor and researcher and currently I haven't got the time to change to R. I have tried it a number of times but when things get complicated I am back in SAS.

If anyone has got SAS to work under Ubuntu I would very much like to hear how.

I managed to install SAS 9.1.3 way back in 2005 on an older Ubuntu version. After fixing some errors in the license file, it installed without any major problems.
However, the usability of the Linux version was so poor that I exchanged it for the Windows version within a week. E.g. the editor wouldn't do highlighting or drag&drop, carriage returns didn't work. It was all very weird. A friend of mine, who also uses SAS under Ubuntu, said that because of that he uses Vim to write/edit his syntax and then pipes the file to SAS.

[knattlhuber]

Another stats package that should be mentioned in this thread is Stata. There is a Linux version of Stata available.

While Stata is not as powerful as R or SAS, it's IMO better than SPSS and it should satisfy the needs of the average biostatistician/epidemiologist. Stata has a quite strong user community that provides a lot of extra commands/tools. It might be worth giving it a try if SAS won't install and R is too complex.

Having said that, I haven't tried Stata on Ubuntu yet. I still run my analyses on Stata for Mac OSX..

[earlycj5]

Another stats package that should be mentioned in this thread is Stata. There is a Linux version of Stata available.

While Stata is not as powerful as R or SAS, it's IMO better than SPSS and it should satisfy the needs of the average biostatistician/epidemiologist. Stata has a quite strong user community that provides a lot of extra commands/tools. It might be worth giving it a try if SAS won't install and R is too complex.

Having said that, I haven't tried Stata on Ubuntu yet. I still run my analyses on Stata for Mac OSX..

Interesting, never used Stata, when I was involved in teaching epidemiology we taught the class using R.

[gah789]

Stata works fine under several flavours of Linux that I have tried it on - including Ubuntu & OpenSuse. The structure of the program - with extensions provided by ado files, etc - means that it is only necessary for the developers to get the core compiler/interpreter right and the rest can be left to individual modules. I use it under Windows & Mac OS-X as well and haven't come across major problems switching programs from one implementation to another.

I gave up using SAS - and previously SPSS - because of its cost and inflexibility. The only reason to use either of them now would be if one had to process massive amounts of data or, in the case of SAS, for complex data manipulation. But under Linux with lots of RAM and/or multiiple processors it is possible to use the SE or MP versions of Stata for relatively large datasets.

R can probably do anything that Stata can do and more, but I find that it is a world of its own and switching from SAS is likely to be horribly slow, whereas the introductory guides to Stata are quite good and the transition is relatively painless.

[pape]

I've mostly use Stata, which I think is an excellent tool available for both Windows and Linux. The only problems with it are that it is commercial, and they annoyingly make different Stata versions incompatible with each other, keeping people in an expensive upgrade cycle (It can be 'found' from the interwebs as well...) .

Once I find the time, I will definitely learn R, but will probably remain dependent on Stata for a long time.

Also note that for doing econometrics, there is gretl, an open source package, which does most of the basic stuff (ie undergraduate econometrics).

http://gretl.sourceforge.net/

[Zimmer]

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=641448
see post #2
SAS doesn't automatically define a directory to use as the "WORK" library, so you have to define it yourself when you start the program.

[LexLuthor08]

I really need spss. It's the standard software for my field and I need to be able to receive and share its data format with colleagues.

But I tried several versions in wine and nothing seems to work (or it works but without any output graphs, which makes it pretty much useless to me).

The linux version of spss 16.0 is missing the most important statistic analysis functions.
I also tried the linux clone "pspp" which is also missing the same functions.

I need to run "repeated measures" (anova with within-subject factors) as simple as possible. Is that so much to ask for?

[knattlhuber]

It's hard for me to believe that you shouldn't be able to do a two-way ANOVA with SPSS. Stats functions shouldn't differ by OS version. You could try doing it as a random-effects model with observations nested in subjects...

Stata is a more powerful yet easier to use package and doesn't cost as much as SPSS. But if you really really can't do without it, you could run SPSS in Virtualbox or VMware (which would require of course a WinXP/Vista license).

BTW, the SPSS file format shouldn't be an obstacle if you want to use a another stats package. SPSS can export into most data file formats. R can read SPSS files (using the 'foreign' library) and export into whatever format you wish.

[XxX_VLAD_XxX]

OK maybe you can help me, I install R or so i think, I did this:

sudo apt-get install r-base

It did installed it, then I tried to run it

~$ r

it said I neede to install another package so I did

sudo apt-get insttall littler

it did install it, but where? I can't run it, I tried again
~$ r

but nothig happend, not an error message or get my terminal back... what you thing is wrong, cause I can't find r-base in Synaptics

[knattlhuber]

Haha.. happened to me before, too. Try

R