Best Statistical Package for Grad Research

[Dov_Love]

I am going to be starting a PhD program in an economicsrelated field and will be doing econometric type statistical work. I have experience using a few differentstatistical packages but want to try to focus my knowledge on one program formy future studies and research. In myexperience, the largest challenges with statistical packages are first availabilityfor my own laptop (since they are expensive) and compatibility with various operatingsystems. So I am thinking that the bestchoice of program is R. R seems to beflexible enough to do most data manipulations/cleaning and I know that with theR packages there are lots of developed procedures to do complex analysis. However, I expect there are other factors Iam not considering and would appreciate any insight into choosing a statisticalpackage to focus my skills in. Perhapsthis is not even something worthwhile to do. Please let me know thoughts andcomments. Thanks!!!!!

[ScreamingHairyArmadillo]

I don't know much about this area, other than the fact that R is quite fantastic. How is it free?? There is so much you can do with it. I'm not sure how much economics people use it though - I know it is often used for ecological research.

However, I do think your school with provide you with any statistical packages that you need. You might not be able to get it for your personal computer, but they should be available at your school's computer labs.

My suggestion is to ask your advisor or current students of the program.

[ScreamingHairyArmadillo]

I actually just ran across a pdf about econometrics in R: http://cran.r-project.org/doc/contrib/Farnsworth-EconometricsInR.pdf

I think spending some time learning one package helps enormously, even if you eventually use another one more often. My plan is also to mess around with R this summer, because I can use it at home, and then see what my program suggests when I get there.

[prolixity]

R is all you need. If it doesn't do something you want it to do, make your own package. I mean, the same can be said for other packages, but R is really fantastic.

I prefer Stata myself for statistical things, because I first learned on it, but any mathematical program will do the trick. Mathematica, R, MatLab, etc..