More impressions -- > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of > Charilaos Skiadas > Sent: Thursday, November 09, 2006 11:45 PM > To: r-help@stat.math.ethz.ch > Subject: Re: [R] Making a case for using R in Academia > > John (and everyone else), > > On Nov 9, 2006, at 4:20 PM, John Fox wrote: > > > Dear Charilaos, > > > > It's very difficult to give definitive answers to the > questions that > > you pose because we don't have any good data (at least as far as I > > know) about > > how widely R is used. > > Yes it certainly isn't an easy question to answer, and I > don't necessarily need complete data. The situation as > presented to me by my colleagues in the Social Sciences is > really that SPSS is "the standard", so I am basically hoping > for evidence to just shake this view (unless it is true, but > I have to say I doubt it). I am more hoping for particular > examples of cases in the Social Sciences, where SPSS is far > from the standard, and the programs and schools you mention > below are exactly the sort of thing I was looking for!
I think it is not the standard -- often unheard of -- by the social science community in large research universities in the States where SAS dominates (unless you are in the Chicago area). So I agree with John. It is perhaps more popular among social scientists in Europe. > > For now unfortunately we will be sticking with SPSS, despite > the considerable cost (which was mainly our problem at the > moment, so SAS is not even being considered for that reason), > but I am hoping to slowly build enough evidence of the > extensive use of R for when all this comes up again. Even > just a list of the universities and departments that use it > would be very helpful, so any of you who would like to send > such information about your departments or other departments > you might know about, off the list, it would be extremely > helpful to me. > > Perhaps it would be useful for such a list to exist somewhere > online? (I guess you could say "google", but I find it hard > to use google to look up such information on R, for the > obvious reason of the shortness of the name. > > > [snip] > > > > Among social scientists the picture is not as clear. My > impression is > > that SPSS is used very widely for low-levels methods > courses taught to > > undergraduates, and not very extensively in the best social-science > > graduate programmes. I would expect that, at present, Stata use in > > social- science graduate programmes exceeds R, and that SAS and R > > would also be used fairly widely. In my opinion, these are the only > > reasonable choices -- I don't think that SPSS is > sufficiently capable > > to compete with R, Stata, or SAS. > > There are, for example, several different packages used at > the ICPSR > > Summer Program in Quantitative Methods for Social Research, but > > several relatively advanced courses now use R. Likewise, the Oxford > > Spring School, hosted by the Department of Politics and > International > > Relations at Oxford, has mostly employed R and Stata. > > Thanks, I will be looking into those. I basically just need > to look at various universities and their social sciences > departments, and see what they use there. As other suggested, > I will be looking into the number of books and papers in R > and how it is increasing every year. > > Once again thank you all for your comments, this has been a > very helpful discussion for me, and it's a great pleasure to > find such a helpful and friendly mailing list. > > > Of course, my own preference is for R. > > > > Regards, > > John > > Haris > > ______________________________________________ > R-help@stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help > PLEASE do read the posting guide > http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. > -- Marwan Khawaja, Ph.D. Professor & Director Center for Research on Population & Health American University of Beirut P.O. Box 11-0236, Riad El Solh Beirut 1107 2020 Lebanon Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Url: http://staff.aub.edu.lb/~mk36/ Tel: +961 1 35 00 00 ext. 4668 Fax: +961 1 74 44 70 ______________________________________________ R-help@stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.