StatPlus 2008

Statplus is an easy-to-use statistical analysis tool. The data processing software application has a very simple and easy user interface, designed to help people who aren’t proficient with statistics.

Pros: Statplus has a good user interface, resembling the Microsoft Excel application. This being the major advantage, people with very little or no knowledge of statistics can easily use the software with few instructions.

The software offers a strong collection of easy to access statistical tools and graphical analysis methods. Statplus 2008 5.0.0.0 is found beneficial across a variety of industry including sociology, financial analysis, biostatistics, economics, insurance industry, healthcare and clinical research, probability calculations for lotteries and gambling operations.

Despite its heavy-duty professional statistical analysis, StatPlus Portable 2008 is a fully featured, powerful data analysis product. It performs all types of analysis, from very basics to complex procedures such as GLM ANOVA, non-parametric and regression analysis, rank correlations like Kendall Tau, Spearman R, and Gamma, Cochran Q test, chi-square analysis, normality tests, T-test, Pagurova Criterion, G-Criterion, Fisher F-test, Correlation coefficients, Cross tabulation, frequency table analysis, Probit analysis and Latin squares analysis. With this application, you can also carry out time series analysis and survival analysis including moving average, auto correlation, partial AC and Cox regression. The spreadsheet is powerful and could import and export data to Microsoft Excel, StatSoft Statistica, SPSS charts including histograms bars, areas, point-graphs, pies and formulas. The additional features of the application include built-in spell checking, function formulas (math, statistical and financial), random numbers generations and matrix operations. Statplus also lets you connect with any document from Microsoft Equation, ACD ChemSketch documents, Microsoft Excel, MathSoft, MathCad and Statistica.

Cons: Though the learning curve is reduced with a friendly user interface, the application is still a heavy-duty statistical analysis tool and would need significant learning for effective use.

Overall: The application is rated 4 stars especially for its friendly user interface.

With StatPlus 2008, one gets a robust suite of statistics tools and graphical analysis methods that are easily accessed though a simple and straightforward interface. The range of possible applications of StatPlus 2008 is virtually unlimited - sociology, financial analysis, biostatistics, economics, insurance industry, healthcare and clinical research, probability calculations for lotteries and gambling operations - to name just a few fields where the program is already being extensively used. While StatPlus 2008 is a "heavy-duty" professional statistical analysis tool, the interface is so simple that even people who have no knowledge of statistics are capable of processing data, provided they know how to use PC and clear instructions are given. This frees up intellectual resources for analyzing the results, rather than agonizing over who and how processed the data, and if any mistakes were made in the process. Statistical features includes basic statistics (from descriptive statistics and normality tests up to Fechner correlation and frequency tables); variety of ANOVA procedures (MANOVA,GLM, Latin and Greco-latin squares analysis); nonparametric statistics (from contingency tables analysis, chi-square test, rank correlations up to Mann-Whitney U, Kolmogorov-Smirnov, Rosenbaum, Wald-Wolfowitz Runs Tests,Kruskal-Wallis ANOVA, Wilcoxon Test, Sign Test, Friedman ANOVA, Kendall's Concordance and Cochran Q Test); regression procedures like linear, polynomial, logistic, stepwise); survival analysis - probit-analysis, cox regression; time series analysis - from smoothing to moving Average, auto correlation, partial AC. StatPlus has powerful data processor (from sampling up to special transformations). Its spreadsheet features: reads Microsoft Excel,StatSoft Statistica,SPSS formats, plots charts - histograms, bars, areas, point-graphs, pies, etc; Students and academic discounts make this package very affordable - from $60 for just 1 license.