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From: jt@nrcvax.UUCP (Jerry Toporek)
Newsgroups: net.math.stat
Subject: Some topics I wouldn't mind discussing
Message-ID: <277@nrcvax.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 20-Sep-85 00:06:41 EDT
Article-I.D.: nrcvax.277
Posted: Fri Sep 20 00:06:41 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 25-Sep-85 10:20:00 EDT
Reply-To: jt@nrcvax.UUCP (Jerry Toporek)
Organization: Network Research Research Corp.  Oxnard,CA
Lines: 48


This newsgroup has been rather quiet.  If there are folks out there,
I'd like to hear what you are doing, or would like to be doing, with
regards to a number of topics related to statistical software.  This 
isn't a survey, so don't feel obliged to answer everything.  Pick out
whatever seems important to you.  Here goes:

Are you generally happy with the available statistical software in your
computing environment?  Are UNIX people using S?  Is it really what you
want, and, if so, for what types of applications?  What else is being used
in the UNIX world?  

Are your data management tools adequate?  Do they provide the kind of 
operating environment you want?  Do data analysts still basically prepare
commands and submit them to a background process, or do they prefer some kind
of interactive operation?

How are the statistical packages performing on the IBM PC?  Do you prefer the
older, bigger, major statistical packages which have been made to run on the
PC, or the newer packages produced specifically to run in the small machine
environment?  Is there a package which combines the best features of both
types of package?  What are those features?

Are people starting to use smaller machines for local computing and large
machines for data storage?  Are there tools available to support distributed
computing and data management?  Do you want them?

Let me interrupt this line of questioning to say that my interest in all this
stems from the fact that most of my professional career has been spent 
developing statistical software, but the past year has been spent entirely
in development of networking software.  The switch came, in part, from a 
belief that statistical software of the future will be built on top of tools
providing access to resources within a network environment.  Data storage
on the machine with the big disks, number crunching from the array processor,
data collection direct from the lab equipment or production line sensors,
print service down the hall on the machine with the laser printer, etc. etc.,
all at my disposal on my little machine under my desk which couldn't hope to
do all that by itself.

Anyone else think this is the way to go?  Are we still recovering from the
dramatic shortages of card readers?  Enough for now?



-- 
	Jerry Toporek
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