Comments on: Teaching stats and software

By: Luis

Luis — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 17:38:53 +0000

Thanks for the suggestion Will. Several years ago I used MATLAB a lot for personal (meaning non-teaching) applications, mostly for simulation and writing algorithms. Since then I moved to Python + Numerical routines (and then to R) for doing so. I like MATLAB’s language a lot, but it feels to me that stats is something that has been ‘bolt on’ rather than being integral part of the language.

Anyway, it seems that my comments have sparked people’s interest in our university, at least to question why we are using some languages today. Do our choices really reflect today’s needs or, in fact, they reflect historical decisions which are no longer relevant?

By: Will Dwinnell

Will Dwinnell — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 13:50:54 +0000

I don’t know if you’re soliciting suggestions, but MATLAB, while not free, is certainly much cheaper than SAS. Also, student versions are available.

By: Luis

Luis — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 19:55:38 +0000

Great! I will be soon updated the asreml cookbook to include two things: i) new features and syntax of version 3 and ii) asreml-R, so one can use asreml directly from R.

In my office I use a laptop (a mac) and a desktop (currently running windows). I am thinking of running the latter with Linux, so Ubuntu sounds like a good choice. Then I would have a full unix office!

By: Tore

Tore — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 12:22:13 +0000

The owl sits on my WinXP toolbar at Skogforsk and I’ve thought about introducing it on my Kubuntu (Hardy) laptop at home, but since KDE has a decent reader (Akregator) integrated with Kmail etc., I use that. – By the way, I would rather recommend Ubuntu and Gnome for anyone since it’s nicer, still if a little less advanced than Kubuntu. And the Ubuntu family also contains server setups for almost any purpose. And there is a clever community if you get stuck like usual people do; the others may well choose Debian of course, the mother of Linux!

(thanks btw for that blogtip regarding GeSHi, have made an asreml.php file, use it with an Italian Txp plugin, worked at first attempt!)

By: Luis

Luis — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 10:45:19 +0000

Hi Tore. I am just venting my frustration at the status quo and trying to convince people to take a look at some very nice open source alternatives.

Concerning the template for the blog, I think it looks elegant, although I will concede that is not the easiest design on the eye. These days I am doing most of my blog reading through Google News (another RSS aggregator). Do you run RSSOwl in Linux? If so, which distro are you using?

By: Tore

Tore — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 09:53:59 +0000

Nice overview and you are hitting the nail on the head; we use basically SAS for data administration though paying for a lot of facilities we never use. (Read it easily in my RSSOwl; that blackish is mainly for younger eyes, isn’t it?)