Why doesn someone just use SPSS (or SAS, BMDP, STATA, or SYSTAT)?
Perhaps my favorite pair of papers were presented by the U.S. Navy in 1985 and 1987. The paper in 1985 was entitled “Data Base Management Systems, Statistical Packages and Report Writers: Is CODAP Really Necessary?” That paper demonstrated that there was no computation in CODAP which could not be duplicated by SPSS. After the paper was presented at the International Occupational Analysts Workshop, I was flooded by pleas to prove the Navy wrong. I replied that the Navy was totally correct. CODAP is the right approach, not because it does something other packages CAN’T DO, CODAP is right approach because it PACKAGES FEATURES to support operational occupational analysis programs. I estimated to “mimic” CODAP’s products would require TEN TIMES the manpower on the part of the computer technicians and analysts to obtain necessary and comparable products. As one might expect, the Navy’s 1987 paper was entitled “NODAC Recants – SPSS as a Supplement to CODAP — not a Replacement.” Again, I say,
