The Popularity of Data Analysis Software: R vs SAS vs SPSS

A comparison of popularity of R, SAS, SPSS and other data analysis software packages, as measured by discussions, citations, jobs, and more.

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Robert A. Muenchen, the author of R for SAS and SPSS Users, has published an article where he compares the popularity of different data analysis software packages.

Among more interesting observations

• R has the largest number of email discussions (by 2-to-1 margin), followed by Stata and SAS
• the number of R packages published on CRAN continues to grow exponentially
• R is leading in blogs (170), with only 31 blogs for 2nd place SAS
• However, as measured by job ads on Monster.com, jobs with SAS and SPSS have a big lead over jobs with R

[ Gregory PS: Among jobs posted on KDnuggets in 2010,
SAS was mentioned in 41%, SPSS in 15%, and R in 14% of the jobs. ]

See also

• analysis by Tal Galili, The Popularity of Data Analysis Software (R vs SAS vs SPSS, etc.)
• David Smith, Analysis: R growth continues in popularity of data analysis software