[lellotope]

Am I missing something or are parts of this article really distorted?

For example, this seems to set up most of the article:

"Economics involves a lot of math and statistics. The most commonly used tools to crunch numbers are the spreadsheet software Microsoft Excel and programming languages Stata and Mathematica."

Is this really true? Mathematica and Stata seem like established but niche products to me at this point. I wouldn't say either of them are "the most commonly used tools to crunch numbers."

If you asked me to predict what a quantitative economist would be using, it would be Python, followed by R, and maybe followed by Java or C, or something like that.

This was an interesting article in the sense I like learning these sorts of things about people, but the premise seemed off to me.

But I'm not an economist so maybe this is something about economics per se.

[bitxbit]

Most quantitative economists do not use Python. They use Stata, SAS, EViews, etc. For methods not yet implemented, the go to application is Matlab (matrix). Python has been gaining traction in the past five years however.

[wjossey]

Nate Silver shared that a vast majority of the latest five thirty eight model for 2018 is constructed in Stata. Just an anecdote, but fairly practical example of something recently written that’s using that technology.

[prepend]

“If you asked me to predict what a quantitative economist would be using, it would be Python, followed by R, and maybe followed by Java or C, or something like that.”

I too was looking for good data. It’s hard to measure this as practical application doesn’t line up with publication.

I was surprised when I started working in health 10 years ago that the predominant tool was Excel, and then SAS. Even 5 years ago in health grad school, they only taught SAS.

This is slowly changing to R and python, but general data analysis skills is less than basic engineering stuff 20 years ago.

[xapata]

Some departments in the FDA require clinical trial data to be submitted in SAS formats :-/

[robterrin]

This is a myth: http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2012/06/fda-r-ok.html

https://www.fda.gov/downloads/forindustry/datastandards/stud...

[xapata]

No, by the text of that same link you provided: "... origin of this fallacy is probably related to the fact that data must be submitted in the XPT "transport format" (which was originally created by SAS)." While that post goes on to say, "This [XPT] data format is now an open standard." That is somewhat disingenuous. The XPT format requires IBM Mainframe floats and other wierdness. It's not always that easy to write XPT.

[thousandautumns]

Depends on the field. In the social sciences, Mathematica and Stata are probably the most widely used tools. Might be that way for economics too, but I'm not sure.

[emgee_1]

I believe they prefer window like interfaces instead of scripting or programming your models. Stata used to be only command line driven and probably still has that functionality ( I used it in 1997-2007) ; then again as a mathematician I prefer R. Or any computer algebra system.

[webmaven]

> I'm not an economist so maybe this is something about economics per se.

No, this is just a case of historical contingency, or the founder effect, depending on your preferred metaphor. Stata and Mathematica are suitable tools (and were suitable early on) that happened to be adopted by a few economists, whose choice was then spread and perpetuated via various organizations and institutions, word of mouth and curricula.

[bachmeier]

> If you asked me to predict what a quantitative economist would be using, it would be Python, followed by R, and maybe followed by Java or C, or something like that.

I've never heard of an economist using Java, and very few using C. Fortran is still quite popular in some areas.

Stata is extremely popular in some areas. GAUSS and Matlab in others (though GAUSS is declining for sure). R is quite popular, particularly since RStudio came along.

[dagw]

I'm not an economist so maybe this is something about economics.

Stata seems to be really popular in economics. Certainly when I was getting my degree all the statistics, modelling and econometric courses at the economics department used either Excel or Stata. A few 'weird' kids used matlab, but the words "Python" or "R" where never mentioned.

[joker3]

When I was finishing up grad school in 2013, I talked to a few econ grad students about what tools they were using for statistics and computing. It sounded like the people just starting out were generally familiar with and in favor of R, but among the older students it wasn't quite as popular. I don't remember anyone mentioning Python at the time.

[leemailll]

Academy is really slow to pick up the trend. And when one group collect years of legacy codes it is even harder to change

[tvanantwerp]

I've spent most of my career working with economists, and they've got a strong preference for Stata. It's what most of them learned in university. I'm hopeful that it's a preference that will slowly be replaced with Python--we're already making that change at the think tank where I work.

[xapata]

My grad program taught SAS, to my dismay.