S-Plus and GRASS

[W. Fredrick Limp]

Alastair,
You asked for comments on S-Plus and GRASS.  We've been involved w/ 
both for some time. On the S-Plus versus other stats issue first. 
S-Plus has all the stats bells and whistles you could ever want 
including a number of cutting edge stats functions. It is organized in 
a language style rather than modules (like SAS or SPSS). Some folks 
love that some hate it.. If you love awk or perl or... you'll *love* 
S-Plus. Lots of great graphic displaye etc etc... 

As to GRASS and S-Plus... of course the really keen thing is that the 
sites module outputs a "fully annotated" data set already formatted for 
S-Plus... you could, of course, output data to SAS etc and write input 
routines but.... 

Statsi has (ugh) DOS and Windows versions as well with a $195 price if 
you're a student...


On 17 Jul 1995, Alastair Duncan wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> A couple of months ago there was quite a bit of discussion on this list about
> the S-Plus statistics package which all sounded pretty interesting. I've just
> got round to getting their marketing documentation which looks great - and yes I
> want it - but the price of the unix version is very steep - I'm going to have to
> make quite a strong case to my boss in order to persuade him to purchase it. 
> 
> Hence this mail - could users of S-Plus & GRASS send me their views on the
> package - ease of use, flexibity, strengths and weaknesses, what it can do
> that's amazing, what it can't do that's annoying, etc, etc. 
> Also steps involved with transferring data between GRASS and S-Plus (I'm a bit
> concerned about the link with Arc/Info as apart from GRASS my organsation's is
> going down the Intergraph path at the moment - anyone linked S-Plus with
> Intergraph ??).
> Also could anyone tell me if there are any other good unix based statistical
> analysis packages that I can use in conjunction with GRASS - especially freeware
> packages.
> 
> Thanks a lot in advance,
> mail me directly - I'll compile responses if anyone else is interested,
> 
> cheers,
> Al.
> e-mail:  100074,213 at compuserve.com
> 
> _______________________________________________________________
> 
> Alastair Duncan,
> Spatial Information Scientist,
> NRA's National Centre for Instrumentation and Marine Surveillance,
> Lower Bristol Road,
> Bath, UK.
> 
> 

W. Fredrick Limp,   Director and Professor       FAX: (501) 575-5218
CAST, Center for Advanced Spatial Technologies   TEL: (501) 575-6159     
12 Ozark Hall, U of Ark., Fayetteville AR 72701   fred at cast.uark.edu 
Opinions expressed here are mine, at least I think they are.