Stata 16 SWOT
August 2019
“Who are JMP’s competitors? (maybe we have them in narrow areas)—but there is nothing else like it.
Who is as interactive?
Who else does as great a job at DOE?
Who does analysis faster and bigger on the desktop?
Who else does Graph Builder as well?
No one, because JMP is truly unique in the crowded marketplace.” -John Sall
Company
- Founded in 1985, StataCorp is a privately-held company based in College Station, TX.
- StataCorp has distributors and resellers in more than 240 countries.
- Statalist serves as their community forum. They also have Stata Press for publishing books, and Stata Journal, published quarterly to paying subscribers or one-issue purchasers.
Product
- Stata provides data management (much of it via scripting), statistical analysis and modeling, graphics, simulations, and programming. Stata also has a mechanism to share user-written programs.
- Through its graphical user interface, Stata generates code, which is displayed in the program window.
- Stata can only read in one data set at a time and holds the data in memory, but now with Stata 16, they can have several data sets open at once via Frames.
- Data access includes PC file formats, ODBC, SAS, Federal Reserve Economic Data files (new), and more.
- Stata runs on Windows, Mac and Linux.
- Stata interface is available in Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, Swedish, and now Korean.
- New in Stata 16
- Generalized regression (which they refer to as Lasso), including Knot analysis, Lasso and elastic net
- Versioning for reproducible reporting
- Meta-analysis to summarize results from multiple studies
- Choice model enhancements to aid interpretation
- Python integration to use any Python package from within Stata
- Bayesian analysis enhancements including multiple chains, Gelman-Rubin convergence diagnostics, MCMC replicates, and more.
- Stata’s Extended Regression Models (ERMs) now support panel data
- Ability to import data from SAS and SPSS
- Nonparametric series regression
- Various other enhancements
Target Audience
- Stata is targeted to scientists and researchers (mostly in the life and social sciences, most notably economics) and analysts in health, public health, finance, business, and marketing. Stata is used in academia as well.
Feature Strength and JMP Response
- Since Stata targets economists/econometricians, their time series and econometric models are more extensive than JMP’s.
- Stata has had Structural Equation Modeling, but now JMP Pro 15 has it, too.
- Users find the documentation about the underlying statistical techniques more thorough than JMP’s.
- Stata offers embedded statistical computations through its Numerics offering. This may be more appealing for building larger-scale analytic apps. JMP’s Dashboard Builder is arguably easier to use.
Feature Weaknesses and JMP Response
- No design of experiments.
- No support for simulation.
- Reviews give Stat low marks for ease of use, aesthetics, and Help that is not very helpful.
- Because it requires so many commands, users waste time looking them up or trying to memorize them and they can’t stay in flow. The command language is also criticized as being quirky.
- Doesn’t have as rich a set of data cleansing and preparation capabilities as JMP.
Opportunities for JMP
- JMP’s investments and innovations in DOE, Reliability, and more modern statistical and visualization methods set us apart.
- With JMP’s interactive dynamic visualizations and extensive data wrangling capabilities, we provide a more complete analytics workbench which also lets the analyst stay in flow.
Threats for JMP
- Stata’s relative strength in time series and econometrics make it hard to compete with JMP capabilities, though we are making progress in these areas.
- Stata’s use by many in the life and social sciences research communities may make it difficult for JMP to grow as easily in these areas.
Pricing
- Stata has a discount curve similar to JMP’s as more users are added to a site.
- Some users complain that Stata is expensive.
- Single-user business and government / nonprofit annual and perpetual pricing in the US:
- Single-user educational annual and perpetual pricing in the US:
Competitive references where we’ve won against them or displaced them.
- Erasmus University of Rotterdam
- Dartmouth Medical School
- Freie Universität Berlin
