> The best statistical pagacke is IMHO R. > > -Egon > > On Thu, 11 Mar 1999, William Park wrote: > > > On Thu, Mar 11, 1999 at 08:29:38AM -0600, rich wrote: > > > Hello all, > > > > > > I'm just about to get my doctorate in neuroscience, > > > and I have have several large databases essential for my dissertation. > > > For statistical analysis, I use Statistica for windows, and for graphing > > > my data, I use SigmaPlot for windows. A call to all scientists out there > > > - are there any native X-based programs that are as good as these? > > > Although these programs are excellent, I would rather not trust my > > > dissertation to the OS I have come to call Sir Crash-a-lot... My only > > > other option is to use a windows emulator (like WINE)... > > >
I agree the best statistical package is R, but it is best in the same way Debian is the best Linux. R demands some time before you get much a lot from it. It has been called the Maseratti while SAS has been called the Ford. R includes a full programming language. While I use the graphics of R, I am uncertain of how well it makes them for paper copies. You learn to use R use either a 60 page document on R, or a book like "Modern Applied Statistics with S-PLUS". A really neat application, xgobi, interfaces with R. xgobi is a graphical tool. With it you can spin three dimensional objects; in fact you can graph and follow higher dimensional objects, though its weird and as they say, "viewing higher dimensions has a usefulness related to your brain's abilities." It's weird seeing 4 axes on a 2-dimensional graph. Rotation helps perception greatly in 3 dimensions, but I'm not ready for 4. I have brushed some points to green in 2-dimensions, then viewed spining 3-dimensions with the green then showing. xgobi makes all this easy: click the type of graphs (3-D rotation, 2-D) you want to view, click from the various variables shown for your data set. >From within R, I start xgobi by merely entering xgobi(my-data-frame) R is big on data-frames, which often have a first line "header" defining your variables when read through "read.table". Debian has the xgobi package that you can use with R, or on its own, though it wants a dataset before it starts. xgobi started at AT&T, with one author now working at Iowa State, and a contributor working at George Mason University. R is a GPL software that does almost identically what SPlus does. You can buy SPlus for Linux: $4995.00. R has some nice features and SPlus has some nice user friendly features, but most programs work on either software. There is also the graphics package gnuplot that some people use; Octave (the MatLab clone) uses the gnuplot package to implement its graphics. Since you are getting your PhD, you must be at a University. Doesn't your university have a computer you can log into. The Universities I am familiar with have the big statistical packages: SAS, SPlus, SPSS, and maybe BMDP. And the universities I know often have statistical consulting, free to faculty and students. They may have recommendations for your university. I occasionally log into a Sun computer 30 miles away, then bring up an X-windows SAS session on my Debian Linux. Oh, you said your datasets are large. Using the options -n and -v in R I have accomodated datasets with 30,000 records and 20 variables on a 128MB computer. I have yet to run out of memory, but R/SPLUS do their computing in memory rather than on/off the disk drive. That makes R very very quick (it is a Mazaratti) but limits itself away from some very large datasets. While R will plot in X-windows, all your programming is text based: no graphical programming interface. -- Jim Burt, NJ9L, Fairfax, Virginia, USA [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.mnsinc.com/jameson [EMAIL PROTECTED] (703) 235-5213 ext. 132 (work) "A poor man associating with a rich man will soon be too poor to buy even a pair of breeches." --Chinese Proverb