Peter Ehlers wrote:
I vote to 'fortunize' Doug Bates on
Hierarchical data sets: which software to use?
"The widespread use of spreadsheets or SPSS data sets or SAS data sets
which encourage the "single table with a gargantuan number of columns,
most of which are missing data in most cases" approach to organization
of longitudinal data is regrettable."
http://n4.nabble.com/Hierarchical-data-sets-which-software-to-use-td1458477.html#a1470430
Hmm, well, it's not like "long format" data frames (which I actually
think are more common in connection with SAS's PROC MIXED) are much
better. Those tend to replicate base data unnecessarily - "as if rats
change sex with millisecond resolution". The correct data structure
would be a relational database with multiple levels of tables, but, to
my knowledge, no statistical software, including R, is prepared to deal
with data in that form.
--
O__ ---- Peter Dalgaard Øster Farimagsgade 5, Entr.B
c/ /'_ --- Dept. of Biostatistics PO Box 2099, 1014 Cph. K
(*) \(*) -- University of Copenhagen Denmark Ph: (+45) 35327918
~~~~~~~~~~ - (p.dalga...@biostat.ku.dk) FAX: (+45) 35327907
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