Stata is great as an excel replacement and has a decent library of pre-programmed statistical models. It's GUI based and targets applied researchers in economic

Stata is great as an excel replacement and has a decent library of pre-programmed statistical models. It's GUI based and targets applied researchers in economics etc. Unfortunately, extending any functions and defining your own models is quite a hassle unless you're familiar with mata (quirky matlab-esque syntax) and R's ecosystem is much more cutting edge. Stata is great for drag and drop data manipulation from what I remember, an excellent excel replacement. Nothing beats dragging and dropping in variables and typing: reg y x1 x2 for immediate regression results.