Wow, Python much faster than MatLab

[Wensui Liu]

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 at yahoo.no> 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)