i am on the faculty at a medical school in philadelphia. i also have an appointment in the graduate school wherein sits our masters in public health program. a group has been putting together a lab course that will complement the statistics classes. in the lab, we want to teach the students how to use software that will - among other things - allow them to do calculations. we have had lots of discussions about which package to use, as well as larger discussions about which package would give the students something they can put on their CV when they look for jobs. there are differences of opinion in our group about which package should be used. part of the problem is trying to weigh ease of use, cost, CV enhancement, etc.
so, to my question, and thanks for any feedback. among SAS, SPSS and STATA (alphabetic order), which one do you all think is called for the most among graduates with masters degrees. as i said, the students are in public health. they are not stat majors but many are likely to get jobs where data are collected and analyzed. none will even identify themselves as "power users." but we know that some are looking at jobs that ask for software capabilities. sorry to ramble, and i've probably left off something key. nonetheless, if you have ideas to share, i'd really love to hear them. thanks very much to all. . . ================================================================= Instructions for joining and leaving this list, remarks about the problem of INAPPROPRIATE MESSAGES, and archives are available at: . http://jse.stat.ncsu.edu/ . =================================================================
