And I thought yesterday afternoon brought good tidings. Today: Stata 9 has arrived! Before I took off the shrink wrap, I put as many of the manuals as would fit on the scanner. As you can see, they've used a fetchingly Hawkeyesque yellow-and-black for the sides the manuals this time, all except for one. I'm surprised in their advertisements for the upgrade they didn't say "Stata 9 also includes Mata: a matrix programming language for the data dominatrix in you, so badass that it wouldn't have been right to dress it anything other than an all-black cover."
Truthfully, though, however sexy Mata might be, I'll probably spend the rest of the afternoon canoodling the multivariate statistics manual.
Update, 3:30pm: I just went down the hill for lunch. On my way down, I caught myself humming a tune that I realized was "Oh my darling, oh my darling, oh my darling Stata 9." I'll spare you the fruits of the subsequent effort to construct appropriate verses.
5 comments:
yeah, but *ALL* of SPSS's manuals come in black... beat that!
SPSS manuals are black out of shame for what an abysmal package it is.
One of my colleagues just shelled out 350 bucks for stata 9 s/e. I thought I was all in style for having purchased intercooled 8. I am always behind the times. R is still the best deal going, FREE! So you can put the FREE back in FREESE, ha ha.
Yes, R is yer only man. The free part means that R users will convert grad student worker bees at higher rates, too, ensuring future dominance over closed-source stata weenies.
SPSS manuals have to be black -- no alternative, and a smart decision. Black reflects the age of software technology SPSS derives from, and it reflects exactly the amount of light that's in its developers minds. Just the opposite is the case with their marketing department: there glows the eternal light of hubris :)
(Besides, know their (SPSSes) Mac support? Not worth to mention ...)
J.B., student of psychology, Germany
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