Wensui Liu wrote: > doing. However, that is not the fault of excel/spss itself but of > people who is using it.
Yes and no. I think SPSS makes it too tempting. Like children playing with fire, they may not even know it's dangerous. You can do an GLM in SPSS by just filling out a form - but how many social scientists or MDs know anything about general linear models? The command line interface of MySQL, SAS, Matlab and R makes an excellent deterrent. All statistical tool can be misused. But the difference is accidental and deliberate misuse. Anyone can naviagte a GUI, but you need to know you want to do an ANOVA before you can think of typing "anova" on the command line. You mentioned use of Excel as database. That is another example, although it has more to do with data security and integrity, and sometimes protection of privacy. Many companies have banned the use of Microsoft Access, as employees were building their own mock up databases - thus migrating these Access databases to an even worse solution (Excel). Sturla Molden -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
