I have\u00a0not posted\u00a0for the last few weeks, not because I have nothing to say but rather because I have been thinking about the future of this blog.<\/p>\n
I have had in mind for some time that there is\u00a0a need to say something about the Bayesian analysis facilities that were introduced in Stata14 and while preparing for that topic\u00a0I\u00a0was\u00a0forced to question the sense of advocating my own parallel set of Stata commands. When I wrote the book, Bayesian analysis with Stata<\/em>, there were no Bayesian options in Stata and I was assured repeatedly that none were planned. Then, shortly after publication,\u00a0there was a change of mind and some very basic Bayesian commands were added to the latest\u00a0release of Stata.<\/p>\n Clearly there is no sense in having two competing systems and equally obviously StataCorp have the resources and experience to produce far better commands than I could. Although it must be said that the\u00a0official additions to Stata14 are pretty basic and\u00a0cannot produce the same variety of Bayesian analyses as\u00a0my own commands.<\/p>\n It looks to me as though Stata have\u00a0rushed out\u00a0a very limited command for Metropolis-Hastings sampling without paying much attention to\u00a0the way in which\u00a0it will fit within the broader Bayesian software that they will eventually\u00a0need to produce.\u00a0While it is true that\u00a0the Bayesian commands in\u00a0Stata14\u00a0are limited,\u00a0experience suggests\u00a0that StataCorp will build quickly on those foundations and eventually they will produce something very impressive. I would not be surprised if they wrote a general Gibbs sampling command using Mata, similar to OpenBUGS or JAGS, or perhaps they will opt for HMC and write a Stan-like program in Mata.<\/p>\n StataCorp seem to have a policy of not linking Stata to other software. One can see the sense of this from an economic point of view as it makes users dependent on Stata and encourages them to buy the new releases. It also allows StataCorp to control the quality of the analyses that Stata produces.\u00a0The downside is that developments are slower than they need to be and StataCorp is\u00a0constantly engaged in\u00a0reinventing the wheel. I think that the experience of\u00a0more flexible\u00a0approaches,\u00a0as typified by\u00a0R and Wikipedia, is that\u00a0looser control\u00a0has many advantages\u00a0and quality is better maintained\u00a0by the continual testing that results from\u00a0heavy use.<\/p>\n Anyway, there is\u00a0little point in my continuing to develop my own Stata commands for Bayesian analysis. It is a race that I cannot win.<\/p>\n There is, I think, still scope for a blog explaining Bayesian methods and illustrating different types of Bayesian analyses but this ought to be based on the official version of Stata and not my own commands. This creates a problem because the official commands are still too basic to do anything really interesting.\u00a0In that sense,\u00a0this blog is a few years ahead of its time.<\/p>\n There is one final factor that needs to be taken into account. I enjoy writing this blog, I certainly would not do it otherwise.<\/p>\n I have not made a final decision but I will probably leave this blog open but post less frequently and meantime give thought to starting a different blog to keep myself amused.<\/p>\n If I were to write another book, it would be called\u00a0Bayesian\u00a0methods in genetic epidemiology<\/em> and I would try to follow the style of \u00a0Bayesian analysis with Stata<\/em>, by which I mean I would\u00a0attempt to emphasise practical application and the understanding of the basic concepts,\u00a0but not worry too much about\u00a0the rigour of the explanation. There are many people analysing genetic data who have not had a formal training in statistics and it interests me\u00a0to try to explain complex statistical ideas to such non-specialists, though I\u00a0realise that\u00a0this is challenging and my attempts will not\u00a0always be successful.<\/p>\n Writing a book is a major undertaking and I do not have time for it at present but I\u00a0am attracted by the\u00a0idea of self-publishing a book as a blog and releasing it in regular instalments, rather as Dickens released Pickwick Papers<\/em>\u00a0 (and no, I do not have any delusions about my writing style, which I know to be very limited).<\/p>\n The trouble is that Stata is not a good program for handling genetic epidemiology datasets, which are often huge. StataCorp made some initial decisions that have been overtaken by events and StataCorp has shown itself slow to adapt. Clearly the idea of only having one spreadsheet of data open at a time is too limiting and restricting that spreadsheet to a few thousand columns makes it virtually impossible to use Stata for many modern applications. I’m sure that Stata will evolve, but\u00a0progress is so\u00a0slow that I fear for\u00a0its long-term market share.<\/p>\n Anyway, a serially released book\u00a0called Bayesian\u00a0methods in genetic epidemiology<\/em>\u00a0would have to use R, so it\u00a0would not be a\u00a0natural continuation of this blog. I will give myself a few months to think it over and if I have the energy, I will make a start on\u00a0Bayesian\u00a0methods in genetic epidemiology<\/em> as a fresh blog\u00a0in the New Year. Meantime this blog will continue, at least for a while,\u00a0but perhaps with a posting every month rather than a posting every week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I have\u00a0not posted\u00a0for the last few weeks, not because I have nothing to say but rather because I have been thinking about the future of this blog. I have had in mind for some time that there is\u00a0a need to say something about the Bayesian analysis facilities that were introduced in Stata14 and while preparing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":134,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[90],"class_list":["post-963","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-stata14"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/bayeswithstata\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/bayeswithstata\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/bayeswithstata\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/bayeswithstata\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/134"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/bayeswithstata\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=963"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/bayeswithstata\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/963\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":975,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/bayeswithstata\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/963\/revisions\/975"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/bayeswithstata\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/bayeswithstata\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/bayeswithstata\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}