Sahifa, I think that Stata (www.stata.com) is becoming one of the leading packages; it is certainly the major rival to SAS and SPSS, and it is superior in at least some ways. It has a very interesting combination of a commercially developed core with the option of adding user-developed routines. If I were picking a new package now and were willing to pay the price, I'd definitely pick Stata over SAS or SPSS. I use SYSTAT (www.systat.com), which is an excellent value compared to most packages, but does not have the range of features you find in Stata or SAS. A problem with SPSS and some other packages is that they want to sell it to you piece by piece, so if you want a certain feature you may have to add it on as an expensive module. Most packages have limited trial versions available on their websites you can try. SYSTAT also has a free version for students called MYSTAT based on an older release with only minor limitations (limited to 100 variables, and lacking some of the more advanced statistics). In addition to R, there are other free packages out there, such as PSPP (http://www.gnu.org/software/pspp/), which is roughly speaking a free version of SPSS, and MicrOsiris (www.microsiris.com/). Bob
There is also SAS, I guess you download a temp version online, or even find out about how it works on Youtube.
Most of the people I know is switching to R. If you find it difficult to use or learn, I'd recommend using the Rstudio suite, and the package Rcommander
R and SAS are the main options I see in use. SPSS is simply too limited. R can be tricky to learn, depending on your programming background, but there are plentiful free help resources. And it's free.
SAS is trickier than SPSS, and extremely expensive, but I find it more intuitive than R (given *my* particular programming background).
Pat
Sahifa, I think that Stata (www.stata.com) is becoming one of the leading packages; it is certainly the major rival to SAS and SPSS, and it is superior in at least some ways. It has a very interesting combination of a commercially developed core with the option of adding user-developed routines. If I were picking a new package now and were willing to pay the price, I'd definitely pick Stata over SAS or SPSS. I use SYSTAT (www.systat.com), which is an excellent value compared to most packages, but does not have the range of features you find in Stata or SAS. A problem with SPSS and some other packages is that they want to sell it to you piece by piece, so if you want a certain feature you may have to add it on as an expensive module. Most packages have limited trial versions available on their websites you can try. SYSTAT also has a free version for students called MYSTAT based on an older release with only minor limitations (limited to 100 variables, and lacking some of the more advanced statistics). In addition to R, there are other free packages out there, such as PSPP (http://www.gnu.org/software/pspp/), which is roughly speaking a free version of SPSS, and MicrOsiris (www.microsiris.com/). Bob
Stata is really good and widely known for people who do empirical work under social sciences. Moreover, stata also has survey design capabilities, features and commands that allows you adjust the sample you have collected based on the survey design - that is really good and by doing it allows greater precision in results.
Free: R - Little bit programming knowledge is required.
Annual Pain: SAS
Sponsor Bears: STATA or SYSTAT
Yes. SAS is more powerful and within fraction of seconds it would give you better output.
@ Maxim, I agree that Statistica from statsoft is one of the best.
@ Bhavna, SAS is very good software but need lots of programming skills. Same is with R very good and most impressing feature is the absolutely free software but requires programming skills.
@ ..... in my opinion best to use are Statistica and SPSS.
I agree. SAS Need programming knowledge . Yes With the help of SPSS can resolve it.I have benn experience that by saving time i did faster work in SPSS instead of SAS.
Hi Mukhtar
1. There are many similarities between Statistical Software Packages (SPSS, SAS, R, Stata, JMP, …) in the logic and wording they use even if the interface is different.
2. Many schools offer only a site license for only one package, and it may not be the one you’re used to.
3. Statisticians, social scientists, … should generally learn SPSS as their main package, mainly because that is what their colleagues are using.
4. SPSS is used by market researchers, health researchers, survey companies, government entities, education researchers, marketing organizations, data miners, and many more for the processing and analyzing of survey data.
5. IBM SPSS Statistics software can help you find new relationships in the data and predict what will likely happen next.
Regards,
Zuhair
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