Running Gauss Runtime on a Mac (2 of 2)

Post date: Jul 20, 2014 8:30:01 PM

I've decided that running the Gauss Runtime environment through an emulator on the Mac is just not worth the hassle because of a fairly fatal problem: Despite being able to execute the runtime, the user is unable to import or export data via the MURRap routines. This is because Gauss uses a proprietary format for storing its data, and the MURRap routines are written to use a built-in "Call Excel" function to bring data in to this proprietary format. The bottom line is that you need Excel installed on your computer for this to work. This means that you would likely need to install an emulated version of MS Excel on your Mac (note: the native Mac version of Excel won't work), and even then I'm not sure it would actually work. In any case, if you're interested in running the MURR statistical routines on your Mac, you can do it, but you'll need to find a PC with MS Excel on it to create and manipulate your datasets....and if you've already got a PC to do this, you'd be better off using it in the first place. However, if you REALLY want to run it on your Mac, drop me a line and I can help.

All of this should underscore why I feel it's necessary to transition over to a program like R that is open source, cross-platform, and not tied to a proprietary data format.