Re: Wow, Python much faster than MatLab

Sturla,

I am working in the healthcare and seeing people loves to use excel /
spss as database or statistical tool without know what he/she is
doing. However, that is not the fault of excel/spss itself but of
people who is using it. Things, even include SAS/R, would look stupid,
when it has been misused.

In the hospitals, people don't pray God. They pray MD. :-)

On 30 Dec 2006 19:09:59 -0800, sturlamolden <sturlamolden@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

Stef Mientki wrote:

> I always thought that SPSS or SAS where thé standards.
> Stef

As far as SPSS is a standard, it is in the field of "religious use of
statistical procedures I don't understand (as I'm a math retard), but
hey p<0.05 is always significant (and any other value is proof of the
opposite ... I think)."

SPSS is often used by scientists that don't understand maths at all,
often within the fields of social sciences, but regrettably also within
biology and medicine. I know of few program that have done so much harm
as SPSS. It's like handing an armed weapon to a child. Generally one
should stay away from the things that one don't understand,
particularly within medicine where a wrong result can have dramatic
consequences. SPSS encourages the opposite. Copy and paste from Excel
to SPSS is regrettably becoming the de-facto standard in applied
statistics. The problem is not the quality of Excel or SPSS, but rather
the (in)competence of those conducting the data analysis. This can and
does regrettably lead to serious misinterpretation of the data, in
either direction. When a paper is submitted, these errors are usually
not caught in the peer review process, as peer review is, well, exactly
what is says: *peer* review.

Thus, SPSS makes it easy to shoot your self in the foot. In my
experience students in social sciences and medicine are currently
thought to do exact that, in universities and colleges all around the
World. And it is particularly dangerous within medical sciences, as
peoples' life and health may be affected by it. I pray God something is
done to prohibit or limit the use of these statistical toys.


Sturla Molden
PhD

--
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list



--
WenSui Liu
A lousy statistician who happens to know a little programming
(http://spaces.msn.com/statcompute/blog)
.

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