RE: CTABLES

[Crichton, Ronald]

I’m posting this from what you might consider ‘bystander status’ only.  I read the posts because I once used PSPP regularly.  I never used PSPP as a statistical tool but used it to assist me in manipulating data.  I work at an educational institution and my job as statistics officer is more about passing on student data than doing any research.  (I suspect most of the people I provide information to would not know a statistical test if it got off the paper and bit them on the bum.)  As part of the job I need summary information of our enrolments for my own needs and in response from requests from others (mainly counts or sums, sometimes means or percentages) and never more sophisticated than that.

 

PSPP has limited capability to summarise data in the way I need it.  It worked very well to manipulate data. Consequently, I persuaded my boss to buy SPSS.  I wanted SPSS because of my previous experience in SPSS using TABLES, and that was the prime reason form moving away from PSPP to SPSS.  Unfortunately, SPSS does not offer TABLES and has implemented CTABLES instead. 

 

I have to admit to not being particularly impressed by CTABLES.  Perhaps I just need more practice using it as some of the SPSS gurus think it’s the bees knees.  I much preferred the old TABLES that I used to use with SPSS v10.  I prefer to write code that point and click, and CTABLES is bit of a challenge in that regard whereas TABLES was quite simple.

 

I will move back to PSPP when a version of (C)TABLES is installed.

 

Regards,  Ron

 

From: pspp-users-bounces+address@hidden [mailto:pspp-users-bounces+address@hidden On Behalf Of Matthias Faeth
Sent: Monday, 9 November 2015 4:20 AM
To: Ben Pfaff
Cc: address@hidden
Subject: Re: CTABLES

 

I'm not sure if I get the discussion under the label CTABLES here: why should "production jobs" replace CTABLES?

Or is it just that there are 3 open topics by now

1. CTABLES

2. Production jobs

3. Reading .spv files

and the discussion is on which to focus time and energy?

Anybody give me a hint, please.

Matthias

Matthias Fäth
Im Mediapark 12
50670 Köln
t: 0221-2907973
m: 0171-9832175
e: address@hidden

 

2015-11-08 8:25 GMT+01:00 Ben Pfaff <address@hidden>:

On Sun, Nov 08, 2015 at 01:36:01AM +0000, Charles Johnson wrote:
> > Date: Sat, 7 Nov 2015 17:03:01 -0800
> > From: address@hidden
> > To: address@hidden
> > CC: address@hidden; address@hidden; address@hidden; address@hidden; address@hidden; address@hidden; address@hidden
> > Subject: Re: CTABLES
> >
> > I've done a lot of the work needed to figure out the format of SPV
> > files. I'm working on publishing a format specification. Then I'll
> > work on implementing a reader for it.
>
> That is great news. If you need more files of type SPV/SPO could ask
> another topic of discussion.

At some point I'll need some more to answer a few lingering questions,
but I can already extract all of the important content.

> > Would it be useful to add support for SPSS production job files? That
> > would not be hard (much easier than SPV files or CTABLES). I'd need a
> > bunch of examples of the format.
>
> From my point of view, production jobs are very useful to automate
> lengthy and complex processes that are made recurrently. As PSPP add
> more commands, the more useful they will be in the future.

OK.

 

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