It's not Strata, it's Stata. Their website is www.stata.com. If you're with an academic institution, the price is about half the commercial price. Also, the full documentation set is expensive, but worth the cost if you don't have all the analytical techniques you'll ever want to use at your fingertips. It's a great reference not only to Stata but to the use and meaning of many tests and forms of analysis.

HTH.

(PS: They should be giving me commission for this, but they're not!)

Steven A. Harvey, MHS Quality Assurance Advisor Quality Assurance Project University Research Co., LLC 7200 Wisconsin Ave. Suite 600 Bethesda, MD 20814-4811 USA

Tel.: 301-941-8441 Fax.: 301-941-8427 >>> "McCormick, George" <GMCCORM@Fayette.k12.ky.us> 11/12/03 5:05 PM >>> Ok, I've been buried in the SPSS jungle for too long. Who publishes STRATA or how can I look up more info on the web? Using STRATA as a search term doesn't seem to be getting any useful info for me, nor does strata software or strata statistics. Any guidance would be appreciated.

George

George McCormick Fayette County Public Schools 701 E. Main St. Lexington, KY 40502 859-381-4245

Re-cycle yourself, be an organ donor.

If you don't have the data, all you really have is an opinion

-----Original Message----- From: Mark Casazza [mailto:mark.casazza@domino1.cuny.edu] Sent: Wednesday, November 12, 2003 4:36 PM To: SPSSX-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU Subject: Re: new SPSS web page

Hi Steven,

Stata is a nice program and I've been recommending it to people (faculty and students) doing directed research for a couple of years now. It's two main advantages are that 1) it comes with more features than any other product for the money, and 2) it comes with full documentation (8 or 9 rather large books). FWIW, I didn't think it that difficult to learn. However, while Stata is excellent when you've only got one (or at most a couple) data sets, it is not good where you've got lots of data sets. It wasn't designed for data management and it shows.

I don't know which way the University is going to go for the future. I know we've still got a site license for SAS (which is also good at data management), but we're also moving just about everything into Oracle. We may wind up putting all of the historical data into Oracle along with the current (since 1990) data and using it as a warehouse for everything, extracting distinct data sets as necessary for analysis in a program like Stata.

But, regardless of what happens, basically throwing away 30 years of code, as well as the expertise of who knows how many users, was a hard decision I'm sorry had to be made. I was certainly in shock when I got the memo explaining why we weren't getting version 12 and why we weren't renewing the site license, but after reading it I can understand it.

Mark Casazza Director of Academic Information The City University of New York 555 West 57th St. Suite 1240 New York, NY 10019

phone: 212.541.0396 fax: 212.541.0372 mark.casazza@mail.cuny.edu

-----Original Message----- From: STEVEN HARVEY [mailto:sharvey@URC-CHS.COM] Sent: Wednesday, November 12, 2003 3:42 PM To: mark.casazza@domino1.cuny.edu; SPSSX-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU Subject: Re: new SPSS web page

As a Stata user who's recently started using SPSS as well, I've been surprised by the money-grubbing nature of the company. Stata has everything in one package--no need to purchase add on modules for every special type of analysis you want to do--and provides free between-version upgrades downloadable from the web--no need to purchase "service" agreements. Yes, it takes longer to learn (though version 8 is now menu driven), but might be worth the investment of time given the much more user-friendly nature of the company. (Sorry for the heresy on the SPSS listserve).

Steven A. Harvey, MHS Quality Assurance Advisor Quality Assurance Project University Research Co., LLC 7200 Wisconsin Ave. Suite 600 Bethesda, MD 20814-4811 USA

Tel.: 301-941-8441 Fax.: 301-941-8427 >>> Mark Casazza <mark.casazza@domino1.cuny.edu> 11/12/03 3:30 PM >>> Hi Sally,

I haven't tried the new site for patches, but SPSS raised the cost of our site license by a factor of 8 this year. Needless to say we didn't renew it. We'll continue to use what we've got perpetual licenses on (and I'm sure some offices will license specific additional components in the short term) but the University community as a whole will have to abandon SPSS. Considering that our license for the mainframe version is number 699 it was a hard decision to give up a program we'd been using for give or take 30 years, but what can we do? Have fun in retirement!

Mark Casazza Director of Academic Information The City University of New York 555 West 57th St. Suite 1240 New York, NY 10019

phone: 212.541.0396 fax: 212.541.0372 mark.casazza@mail.cuny.edu

-----Original Message----- From: SPSSX(r) Discussion [mailto:SPSSX-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU]On Behalf Of Sally Zitzer Sent: Wednesday, November 12, 2003 3:10 PM To: SPSSX-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU Subject: new SPSS web page

Has anyone tried to access the SPSS patches on the SPSS web page in the last few days? I am trying to see what patches there are for version 10. But I can't get at them unless I have our University ID apparently, and that is something only our staff person who arranges the site-licenses knows. It is not something that can be handed out to our 2,000 or so users on this campus. It appears that, if I can get permission to use their web site, I will be responsible for emailing the appropriate patches to those 2,000+ users in the future. I guess they are trying to discourage us from having a site-license. I'm awfully glad I retire in 7 months!

Sally in Seattle

Sally Zitzer, Statistical Software Consultant Computing & Communications University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

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