Advantages of Gauss include:
(1) It is a matrix programming language. [For example, given appropriately
defined matrices x and y, the OLS estimator can be calculated as bols =
invpd(x'x)*x'y;]
(2) The Gauss program MAXLIK (a Gauss add-on) works well for nonlinear
optimization problems such as m-estimators. [For example, GMM and maximum
likelihood].
(3) It has excellent looping facilities for storing results. So it
is good for simulation.
(4) It has excellent graphics.
Many of these features are also shared by other matrix programming languages, notably MATLAB, S-Plus and SAS/IML. We use Gauss because this is the standard in cross-section nonlinear econometrics.
Disadvantages of Gauss include:
(1) It is not as simple as standard packages. In particular, for reading
in and transforming data and initial OLS analysis etc. it is better to
use a package such as Limdep.
(2) The manual is not easy to read.
The first volume is the most useful. In particular for initial use read
(and do on the computer)
Chapter 1: Language Fundamentals
Chapter 2: Operators (especially matrix operators).
Also useful is the Tutorial which is Chapter 3 in earlier versions
of the manual but is no longer included in the manual.
The second volume gives detail on specific Gauss commands. This information can also be found while running Gauss using the Gauss help facility.
The Gauss add-ons have their own manuals. In particular, you may be
interested in
Gauss Applications: Maximum Likelihood
Despite its name this is more general than maximum likelihood and also
does e.g. GMM.
The Gauss homepage is http://www.aptech.com/
A useful link is to Links & Other Resources.
In particular you can link to http://eclab.econ.pdx.edu/gpe/
toc.htm GAUSS Programming for Econometricians - a web-based course.
Also the site http://weber.u.washington.edu/~ezivot/gaussfaq.htm
includes information from the help files in the DOS version 3.2.13. Command
Summary Mathematical Operators Publication Quality Graphics Proc MAXLIK
These are well worth printing out.
And don't forget that Gauss has its own on-line help, using the Gauss command help.
Here I focus on the Unix version on the SSDS computer BLACK. I assume that you connect to Black from a PC by running a telnet session.
There are two ways to run Gauss on the Unix machine: with a text interface
and with a graphics interface.
With a graphics interface is better, but this requires that your computer
has X-windows emulation software such as Exceed. The command to run Gauss
is simply gauss
I will assume that you do not have this software, and we instead use
the text inteface. The main loss is that the Gauss editor cannot be used.
The command to run Gauss will be gauss -v
(1) Telnet to miller.ucdavis.edu
(2) Log on
(3) At the unix prompt give the command gauss -v
(If you have X-windows emulation you can instead give the shorter command
gauss).
(4) To exit gauss give the command quit
This should print out a 4 x 2 matrix with first row 1 2, second row 3 4, third row 5 6 and fourth row 7 8.
The Gauss manual is written for DOS rather than Unix. So some minor changes need to be made. Also since we are only using a text rather than graphics interface some changes need to be made. Important ones include:
A simple way to do this is to read the ascii data using the load command.
For example, suppose there are 6 observations (rows) and 4 variables
(columns) in the ascii file named rawdata. First use the load command
to read the ascii data into a matrix:
load x[6,4] = rawdata;
and then use the saved procedure to create from this matrix
a Gauss data set called mydata:
call saved(x,"mydata",0);
For more complicated ascii files use the Gauss Utility ATOG386.
For details, see the relevant chapter in Volume I of the Gauss manual.
A simple way is to use the data conversion program DBMSCOPY. This will convert e.g. SAS data sets to Gauss data sets. (DBMSCOPY is a separate program unrelated to Gauss).
When you exit gauss the output will be in your directory in file myfile.out. This can be edited, e.g. using pico, and printed out in the usual way.
A simple way to run Gauss in batch mode is to run through a cycle of three commands
Useful Unix commands include ls which lists the directory, cp to copy
a file, and rm to remove a file.