Re: Worthwhile to buy STATA 8?

From: jwalla (john_wallace_at_affymetrix.com)
Date: 11/19/04 

Date: 19 Nov 2004 10:41:23 -0800

Hi Joseph
Stata is my favourite analytical package, so I might be biased. That
said, you'll be well served by learning the software before you're
pressed for time with it. Major upgrades (the type that requires
purchasing a new license) happen infrequently, but there are almost
monthly free updates. None of the free updates alter the functionality
of the software such that anything you're going to do now would be
unfamilar a year from now. I lived through the Stata 7 to Stata 8
upgrade with almost no personal relearning required - they tend to keep
the old and tack on the new (in this case, a much more refined graphing
capability).

You can get student-grade versions of Stata that have all the
functionality of the full SE package (they just cap the number of
variables you can process and the size of the matrices) for a very
reasonable cost. You'll find a very supportive user community for
Stata in the mailing list "Statalist", which you can find through
Stata's support pages.

Good luck!

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