Re: [Gretl-devel] A short wish list
Am 22.04.2013 09:27, schrieb andreas.rosenblad(a)ltv.se:
> I would argue that at least all tests and methods used in
introductory
> courses in statistics for business and economics are essential and should
> be included in the default/basic gretl. This would make gretl even more
> useable for such courses. Currently missing are at least Z-test of means
> for paired data and Kruskal-Wallis test.
There may be a misunderstanding here: Nobody is arguing that certain
tests or estimates shouldn't be distributed with gretl per default, if
they are available. But how these features are developed or implemented
is a different issue. What Allin meant is simply that for a while now
there have existed some other ways to add a feature, not just writing it
in C. (The same happens in many other programs -- Ox, Stata, R, even
Eviews now, etc.)
Of course ideally gretl should give users what they need; if there is a
feature request the user cannot automatically be expected to implement
it herself (that would somehow defeat the purpose of the software, at
least to some extent). But there is the traditional problem of scarcity
of resources. Having said this, gretl's language hansl is quite
intuitive and easy to learn, so chances are it is not so difficult to
write a function if you (or whoever) knows the statistical theory behind
the feature.
Everybody here on the list is willing to help to then integrate this
function somehow into the interface, if the feature is really considered
essential (see below).
Now a specific question w.r.t. to the paired data: You don't mean data
of the type "before-after", where you could just take the difference of
the two connected observations to get a single series to test, do you?
> Also, for duration data, I think that Kaplan-Meier curves
plot, log-rank
> test and Cox regression are basic and essential tests and methods.
The important qualifier here is "for duration data", which personally I
view as a rather specialized field (a matter of taste or habit,
probably). So I wouldn't call this "basic" in general.
cheers,
sven