Why anyone takes this idiotic PC Mag thing seriously I have no idea!! For
whatever reason, SAS was not included. The survey is totally bogus:
1) most of the raters were amateurs
2) nothing interesting was rated - they didn't rate macro systems, and data
management capabilities were almost ignored
3) SAS alone has perhaps 500-600 separate statistical procedures. SPSS and
BMDP are almost as complex. SYSTAT is below, but of course it is now a
pawn of SPSS.
4) SPSS uses lots of stand-alone things, for whom they are not responsible.
BMDP and SAS are all (I believe) written in-house.
Please - let's be realistic. The PC Magazine survey was written by idiots
for amateurs. It has no relevance for anyone who does statistics
professionally. The survey is not relevant, and it should be dropped from
consideration.
-- Paul Thompson, Ph.D. | This space devoted to amusing sayings. Department of Psychiatry | Case Western Reserve Univ| Cleveland, OH 44106 |