[yoesh]

Recent events:
SPSS 11.5 doesn't really work with 10.3.x -- SPSS's advice is to downgrade to 10.2.6. When our IT person asked the SPSS folks if it will be fixed for v 12, the answer was 'no' -- they are planning to fix the incompatabilities with v 13 for Mac.

So on one hand, perhaps i should be happy they are working on v13. But this is getting old. So I'm interested in alternatives that actually work with 10.3....

So I'd be interested in any of your experiences with:
- JMP
- Stata
- others??

I don't need all the fancy stats of a biostatistican, but things that max out at one-way ANOVAs aren't going to be strong enough for my needs. Of course the other main alternative is to buy a PC box and use it for stats, but I'd rather not got that route if I don't have to.

[torifile]

What problems are you having with SPSS 11? (are they up to 11.5 for Mac? The latest I've got is 11.02.) While it's not a pretty program to work with, I've been able to use it without any problems on my 10.3.4 system. BTW, SPSS is always one major OS version behind, it seems. I've been long toying with the thought of learning R for a long time. I've used it pretty extensively for one specific purpose (taxometric analyses) but I haven't had time to learn how to do other stuff with it. But it goes far beyond what SPSS can do and it's free. And the Mac version is actually better than the PC version, if you can believe it.HTH.

[yoesh]

Thanks for the suggestions...I'll look into R....

SPSS 11.5 will launch on my G5 (10.3.4) but will hang/spinning beach ball shortly after you attempt to do anything. It worked before on a G4 PB (10.2.x) -- but was slow as molasses -- and wouldn't play well with Mail.app (had to quit out of Mail for SPSS to work).

And of course, I took a new position (with the requisite new computer). I used to think that transfering all my stuff was a pain -- what's worse is transferring it and having it not work.

I'm not sure what the min OS reqmts for the G5 towers are, but it's to the point that i'm considering: a) keeping an older mac around just to run older stats programs; b) finding a new software program (not cheap); c) getting a PC box to run PC-stats (not cheap either).

Worst of all, neither 'a' nor 'c' is particularly elegant (have a different computer for each type of program? ...hell, might dig out my SE/30 and do all my word processing on Word 5.1a ;-) Or maybe just downgrade a bit and buy a new G4 tower that runs a flavor of 10.2.

I love the fact that Apple has been updating the OS every 6-12 months -- but it is causing chaos with a lot of different apps that don't devote the same resources to Mac Programming and R&D fixing all the bugs.

[torifile]

That's what I don't understand. I'm using SPSS on 10.3.x without a problem. Have you tried deleting prefs, etc? It *should* work. I wouldn't downgrade to Jaguar just for SPSS since it does, in fact, work. Or you could spend some time learning R... SPSS sucks. Good luck.

[symonsl]

Originally posted by yoesh:
c) getting a PC box to run PC-stats (not cheap either).

I inherited someone's old PC and use Microsoft Remote Desktop to link to it to do SPSS. Faster than VirtualPC by a long shot.

http://www.microsoft.com/mac/otherpr...edesktopclient

[Mithras]

I've used Stata before and like it pretty well. It has more have a quasi-command line interface, but even in SPSS I use the scripting most of the time anyways. Stata is definitely worth considering.

[threestain]

There's another way - I couldn't get my head around spss the last time I used it, so I tried out Graphpad's Prism - very easy to use, and looks relatively powerful. Plus there's a 30 day demo on the website:

Graphpad

[philm]

I use JMP and it is fine. It has the benefit of being the fastest launching app on my Mac. Out of preference and habit, though, I still fire up Statview 5.0 and SuperANOVA under Classic. I think SuperANOVA is the 1991 version.

[Rickster]

I don't do stat stuff myself, but it's my wife's bread and butter... she's quite happy with R. Apparently it's seeing an impressive rate of improvement in new releases, too.