comparison of statistical packages

Michael Mitchell, UCLA ATS Statistical Consulting Group, provided a comprehensive comparison of SPSS, STATA, and SAS. Check out his report here.

On p.31, he talked about R and thinks that R is very difficult to learn. Well, I agree it is difficult to learn R if there is no right road map and guidence. But, R is not difficult to master if you just want some results. Most of time, R requires only several lines to get the results. Therefore, it is still an open for students to decide what they like. If I like Stata, I would say that a graphical user interface of R (R-GUI), such as JGR will make R look and and easy to use as Stata.

a comparison of text editors for R

While I am evaluating Jedit as a text editor for beginners of R, I found this site that introduces JGR and SciViews, the two GUI packages that be attractive to R users.

http://www.nettakeaway.com/tp/R/137/r-guis

用Muse做網站

怎麼樣把用Emacs打出的純文字筆記直接出版成漂漂的網頁呢？我之前用的是Emacs-wiki，我這兩天決定使用muse來取代emacs-wiki，把成果放在這兒： http://lark.cc.ku.edu/~ashan/wiki/WelcomePage.html

Good Firefox Extensions

I use Firefox because it is a cross-OS browser. I can use it in either Linux or Windows without being constrained by IE. Another reason I use Firefox and would recommend it to you is that it allows many addons that enhance browsing experiences.

Here are my most favorite extensions:
1. All-in-one gestures: with it, you can close a window by simply draw a line while holding the right bottom of the mouse.
2. Web-developer: it gives you the power to look through the source codes of a website and how its CSS is designed.
3. Tab-Mix-plus: let's makeall new windows, including pop-ups, into different tabs one frame.
4. Performancing: it gives you the power to add new stuff to your blogs while browsing.