Alright, this is a big life decision I've been mulling over and need thoughts on. Should I switch to R (or Python?), or stick with Stata? I currently use Stata, and the main reason I see for switching is to improve replicability in research. /thread
Stata
Pros: simple, lots of stats packages, frequently used by economists
Cons: proprietary, limited data visualisation capabilities compared to R
R
Pros: Beautiful graphs, open source, better programming
Cons: more limited for common stats applications, I'd have to learn it
Pros: simple, lots of stats packages, frequently used by economists
Cons: proprietary, limited data visualisation capabilities compared to R
R
Pros: Beautiful graphs, open source, better programming
Cons: more limited for common stats applications, I'd have to learn it
I think research, including mine, needs to become more open source and easily replicable. Fundamentally that requisites public code and an open source analysis package. Stata is more likely to lose easy replicability as new versions are updated.
Yet, most work I do can be done just fine in Stata. Code can be posted. If it was open source, I'd stick with it. And learning R, while fun, might not be a good use of my time. #opportunitycost
Any thoughts, tweeps?
cc @andrew_leach @bcshaffer @BradHackinen @trevortombe
Any thoughts, tweeps?
cc @andrew_leach @bcshaffer @BradHackinen @trevortombe
