----- Original Message -----
Sent: Friday, September 25, 2009 1:53
PM
Subject: [Norton AntiSpam] Re: Can we
"freeze" at SPSS 15 for several years?
If one wants "SPSS versus other software" one should look at
the Tabachnick & Fidel
"Using Multivariate Statistics" which is presently in the
5th edition. Available on
Amazon and other booksellers, I suggest looking at the
4th edition which compares
how SAS, SPSS, and SYSTAT (remember that?) compare in doing
the same analyses:
or
Back when I was in grad school (late 1970s, early
1980s) it was emphasized that doing
any serious (high stakes) statistical analysis should be in
at least two different statistical
packages and to compare the output for
both (I typically used BMDP and SPSS). This
was a policy followed by some physicists who wanted to make sure that their home grown
programs behaved appropriately even if
then used different algorithms for calculations.
Of more direct relevant to experimental psychologists like myself and social science researchers
was the 1977 American Statistician article by Leland Wilkinson and Gerard Dallal which is
available on www.jstor.org. Here is the
citation info along with a stable Jstor URL:
- Accuracy of Sample Moments Calculations among Widely Used
Statistical Programs
- Leland Wilkinson and Gerard E. Dallal
- The American Statistician, Vol. 31, No. 3
(Aug., 1977), pp. 128-131
(article consists of 4 pages)
- Published by: American
Statistical Association
- Stable URL:
http://www.jstor.org/stable/2682964
Wilkinson and Dallal showed how several different mainframe
software programs
(i.e., SPSS, BMDP, OSIRIS, and DATATEXT) could produce
errorneous results because
the programmers failed to take into account the possibility
of underflow or overflow
errors because they had not allocated sufficient space in
memory to represent very
small or very large numbers. Only BMDP, because it
used a different algorithm was
able to produce correct results. I wondered how many
people who had used SPSS
or the other programs for their dissertations or published
researched actually went
back to their data and re-analyzed it in order to find out
whether they had made any
errors. Subsequent versions corrected these problem
but given the complexity of
statistical programs, new problems will inevitably crop
up.
Wilkinsion and Dallal would go on and develop various
statistical testing batteries
to see how accurate the calculations are for the newer
statistical packages. B.D.
McCullough has also done the same; see;
McCullough has also evaluated the statistical capabilities
of off-the-shelf Excel and
his recommendation is don't use Excel for any serious
statistical analysis. You
don't have to take his word
It should also be noted that Leland Wilkinson (his webpages
is
package. It might be remembered that SPSS bought SPSS
(along with
a lot of other software packages) but then spun SYSTAT
off (the story
on this is provided by Wilkinson on his website;
see:
So, SYSTAT is still available as a statistical package
(I own a copy of
version 11) and more information about it can be obtained
from the SYSTAT
I would suggest that people take it into consideration as a
vaiable alternative
to SPSS but such a decision would be dependent on how well
SYSTAT meets
you immediate and foreseeable needs.
-Mike Palij
New York University
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Friday, September 25, 2009 5:55
AM
Subject: Re: Can we "freeze" at SPSS 15
for several years?
Looks fairly intuitive. Can it really do
everything I want? If so, does this mean I have to ditch 38 years of
SPSS?
My tutorials are built round the processing and
analysis of actual data from real questionnaire surveys (no artificial data
whatsoever) from initial checking of raw data to publishable tables and
charts. I use SPSS because it was there when everyone needed it, was
widely available and had a manual which made sense (even though I had to
write tutorials to suit the research sequence rather than follow the
alphetical sequence of commands).
I'm too busy doing my SPSS versions, but it
would be interesting to see parallel STATA syntax alongside that for
SPSS. More than 30 years ago, Steve Tagg and I thought of producing a
Clods' Guide to Survey Analysis with SPSS, but we later
also had the idea of a loose-leaf edition with side-by-side examples from
other software. I don't know if anyone has actually produced such a
manual, but if anyone wants to try it with any of my tutorials, feel
free.
This thread is throwing up some really
interesting comments, but I'm not sure the subject is catching everyone who
could contribute. Perhaps something like, "SPSS versus other
software"?
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Friday, September 25, 2009
11:00 AM
Subject: Re: Can we "freeze" at SPSS
15 for several years?
I don't get the complete SPSS-synta, but I try my
best.
> recode V363
(1 3 5 7 =1)(2 4 6 8 =2) into ethnic.
One possibility:
recode
V363 (1 3 5 7 =1)(2 4 6 8 =2)
ren V363 ethnic
> rename
variables (v348 = sex).
ren V348 sex
>
freq sex ethnic.
tab sex ethnic (maybe with
some suboptions, depending on what you want
in each cell)
In
fact, I don't think there's much of a difference between SPSS and
Stata
for these simple commands. The main advantage of the
Stata-syntax is
that it always follows the structure "command
variables, options" which
makes it pretty intuitive. For instance,
Linear regression
reg y
x
with robust standard errors
reg y x, robust
with
bootstrapped SEs (500 reps)
reg y x, vce(bootstrap,
reps(500))
Logit
logit y x
with robust standard
errors
logit y x, robust
And so
on.
Best,
Nils
On Thu, Sep 24, 2009 at 10:58 PM, John F
Hall <johnfhall@orange.fr>
wrote:
> If SPSS syntax is:
>
> recode V363 (1 3 5 7
=1)(2 4 6 8 =2) into ethnic.
> rename variables (v348 =
sex).
> count sexism = V248 V252 V253 V256 V261
(3,4)
>
> V251 V255 V259 V260 (1,2).
>
> freq sex
ethnic.
> freq sexism /his nor.
> cros sexism by sex
ethnic
> /sexism by sex by ethnic /cel per.
> means sexism by
sex ethnic
> /sexism by sex by ethnic.
>
> ...what would
the syntax be in STATA and would it be as easy to
understand?
>
>