A SURVEY OF NO (OR LOW) COST STATISTICAL SOFTWARE PACKAGES

FOR BUSINESS STATISTICS

Nancy Leveille

University of Houston-Downtown

Anna Simmons

University of Houston-Downtown

Diann Resnick

University of Houston-Downtown

Ron Barnes

University of Houston-Downtown

ABSTRACT

A number of Business Statistics courses have migrated from using SAS, SPSS or Minitab to less expensive statistical software. Excel, even with its Data Analysis and Charts options has proved inadequate for most courses. While Excel Add-On packages are now often provided by publishers with statistics textbooks, many faculty members find them lacking in breadth or depth for all the usual topics covered. This paper surveys various alternative sources of statistical software packages available at nominal, or no, cost that address these shortcomings. A number of web based software packages including StatCrunch. StatPages and CrunchIt! are considered. In addition, a number of web pages where one can perform statistical calculations including MyStat, Statcato, ActivStats and R are noted. Teaching applets and resources are also mentioned. Some of these sources are tied to publishers and are available in student versions either free or at low cost. Others are stand-alone and available at low or no cost. These alternative statistical packages are available for faculty to use in their research.

INTRODUCTION

While SAS, SPSS and Minitab have seemed essential for statistical investigations, escalating costs and budget cuts have forced many university programs to actively seek out viable, less expensive replacements. Business Statistics courses, when taught correctly, involve a significant amount of statistical software generated results. Since Excel is widely used in business, the first replacement attempts focused on Excel and, in particular, its data Analysis and Charts options. The Byzantine procedures one must navigate to get to anything resembling, but not completely, a correct frequency histogram from either of these Excel options, suggests to students that “an elephant is being used to crack a peanut!” The Data Analysis option contains procedures on hypothesis testing, ANOVA and simple regression among other topics. However, these procedures are inadequate. For example, the regression procedure only allows for a single independent variable. Similarly, the One Way ANOVA only produces the ANOVA table with F and p-values. If these indicate differences, because no comparison tests are included, it is not possible to determine which particular means are significantly different. The ANOVA procedure also lacks any of the usual tests for the assumption of equal variances. Students can conclude significant differences occur, based on the procedure’s output, without realizing that one of the assumptions underlying the validity of the test is violated! Multiple Regression is not available. Further, Time Series, Quality Control, and a variety of other statistics topics are either not covered or given inadequate procedures in Excel.

To remedy the deficiencies in Excel (Cryer, 2001), a number of publishers have produced Statistical Add-On routines which overlay the Excel package. Disk versions are packaged with various statistics textbooks while others use downloads. Virtually all publishers of Business Statistics textbooks have a package of such Add-On routines. However, the quality and extent of these various packages varies widely – from user friendly to user hostile and from adequate to trivial. While many publishers allow colleges adopting their texts to load these packages in their Statistics Labs and also on classroom computers, in the future, the students will neither have access to newer editions of these packages nor any support services after they graduate. Therefore, the software needed in their jobs and in statistical investigations will probably be soon outdated or unavailable. To address these additional difficulties, Business Statistics faculty and researchers have sought out viable and adequate alternatives. This has led to the consideration of low, or no cost, software packages that are widely available, statistically correct, comprehensive and likely to continue in existence for a long time into the future. It is these alternative packages that are the focus of this paper.

WEB-BASED STATISTICAL SOFTWARE

StatCrunch

StatCrunch (Pearson, 2010) is a web-based data analysis tool designed for teaching statistics. It allows users to perform complex analyses, share data sets and generate reports. It provides users with an extensive list of statistical operations. A suite of graphical representations allows users to generate visual reports of their findings. Figure 1a. is a sample of a StatCrunch histogram. The histograms featured below use the listed data for years doctorate earned by faculty members: 1965, 1972, 1982, 1993, 2004, 2001, 2009, 1997, 2004, 1995, 2006, 2006, 2005, 1997, 1976, 2004, 1973, 2004, 1969, 1997, 1986, 1986, 1984, 1989, 2000, 1990, 1999, 2004, 1996. StatCrunch is straightforward, intuitive, and easy to use. The highlighted column had the corresponding data highlighted in the table which is a good feature for teachers. Figure 1 b. is a histogram generated by CrunchIt! which will be discussed below.

Figure 1 a. StatCrunch Sample Figure 1 b. CrunchIt! Sample

StatCrunch’s recently added features include: Tukey’s HSD test for multiple comparisons of ANOVA; logistic regression, nonparametric procedures; regression diagnostics; various probability distributions and Google maps software for geographical displays. StatCrunch has an extensive listing of Data Menu procedures, an extensive Graphics, Menu and a Stat Menu that includes: summary statistics, contingency tables, Z and t statistics, ANOVA, nonparametrics, simple and multiple linear regression and logistic regression, and all the usual quality control charts. StatCrunch is now exclusively distributed by Pearson Education so faculty will be required to create a Pearson Educator account if they do not already have one. Instructors are offered complementary access to StatCrunch. Go to their website at www.statcrunch.com , click on live link Subscribe, click on live link for request access to obtain an access code, then click on the redeem access code. Your campus Pearson representative can also assist you. Students have three options: (1) redeem access code which provides for a 10 day free trial, (2) purchase 6 months of access for $12, or (3) purchase 12 months of access for $22.50. Professionals can also choose either of these last two options. More importantly, one can purchase a bulk number of StatCrunch access codes. When a 12 month StatCrunch access code is bundled with a Pearson textbook as a value pack, the additional charge for StatCrunch is only $5. A very helpful Study Card is available from Pearson and is intended to serve as a brief introduction to the use of StatCrunch and covers the procedures most students will encounter in an introductory Statistics course. There are help links on the web site with more extensive documentation.

CrunchIt!

CrunchIt! 2.0. (2010) is a free, no frills, statistics website that is also straightforward, intuitive and easy to use. The main categories are Data, Statistics, and Graphics with each of these live links featured on the main page, at http://crunchit2.bfwpub.com/crunchit2/ips5e/?section_id , leading to many choices. Figure 1b. shows a sample histogram made through the Graphics link for comparison with the StatCrunch version. Note two differences: (1) the label Frequency is indicated along the vertical axis in the CrunchIt! version and (2) the StatCrunch version has the added feature of highlighting data in a table corresponding to a column highlighted by clicking on it.

StatPages

StatPages (Pezzullo, 2010) lists a collection of websites for performing statistical calculation available at http://statpages.org/javasta2.html#Freebies . Sections of the website include: (1) Interactive Stats, (2) Free Software, (3) Books and Manuals and (4) Demos and Tutorials. We leave exploration of the site to the interested reader with the caveats that some of the programs take a long time to download, some links lead to advertisements and some sites have errors. For example, at one link called Statext what was called a histogram was neither a histogram nor importable into this document and so the sample is not included with the others above.

DOWNLOADABLE PROGRAMS

ActivStats 3.0

ActivStats 3.0 (Velleman, 2010) is a multimedia education product on CD-ROM for teaching introductory college-level statistics and using the Data Desk data exploration package. The Academic Version can be used along with an introductory statistics course or for additional study and review. It is designed to work with many standard statistics texts and can even be used as the main text of a course. As such, it provides a built-in statistics package at no extra cost. To purchase the Academic Version, one must be a student or faculty member affiliated with an accredited academic institution. ActivStats Academic Version is sold through http://www.mypearsonstore,com and supported by Pearson Education.

MyStat

The MyStat package (Systat, 2008), www.systat.com/MystatProducts.aspx , essentially links to a student version of Systat. This is a competitor to SPSS, SAS, Minitab, JMP, Data Desk and similar packages. It is more powerful than the student versions of any of these and the price is right – free. It is easy to use and more like Windows applications than R which is discussed below.

R

R (Institute for Statistics and Mathematics, 2010) is a programming language for advanced statistics and as such it is not particularly easy to use. It is available at http://www.r-project.org/main.shtml Teachers ask about it because they have heard that it is free. That is true, but is not the only factor to be considered. It is appropriate for use by individual students who are programmers or planning careers where high powered statistics is required. The graphical user interfaces, such as R Commander, make R a bit more user friendly.

Statcato

Statcato (Object Refinery Limited, 2009) is statistics software, available at www.statcato.org . It is a free Java software application developed for elementary statistics applications. It is tailored for community college students and instructors.

TEACHING APPLETS

Resources on the Web for Statistics Students and Teachers

The Resources on the Web for Statistics Students and Teachers (Heckard and Utts, 2010) has the following categories: Current News, Resources by Teachers for Teachers, Survey Methodology, Data Sets, Gateways to Data and Government Reports, Miscellaneous, Java and JavaScript Activities, Listserve Archives, Journal of Statistics Education, Quotes, and Jokes. The fun of exploration is left to the interested reader.

Rice Virtual Lab in Statistics

David Lane at Rice University has developed the Rice Virtual Lab in Statistics (Lane, 2008) which is available for free at http://www.ruf.rice.edu/%7Elane/rvls.html The main listed links are: HyperStatOnline, Online Statistics: An Interactive Multimedia Course of Study, Simulations/Demonstrations, Case Studies, and Analysis Lab.

SUMMARY

This paper noted that escalating costs and increasing budget cuts are forcing many to consider seeking out viable, less expensive alternatives to the traditional SAS, SPSS and Minitab statistical software packages. Some of the drawbacks and limitations of replacing these packages with Excel and its Data Analysis and Charts procedures were pointed out. Publisher Add-On programs that overlay Excel were discussed and some of their limitations were also noted. This paper then considered a number of free, or low cost, alternatives including web-based software available such as StatCrunch, StatPages, and CrunchIt! Free or inexpensive downloadable pages including ActivStats 3.0, MyStat, R and Statcato were also noted. Some teaching applets developed at Rice University were also mentioned.

StatCrunch was seen to have an extensive and inexpensive library of programs. MyStat was seen to be a competitor of SPSS, SAS, Minitab, JMP and other classical software packages. Its student version is more powerful than the student versions of its competitors and it is free! R was seen to be a free programming language for advanced statistics use, while Statcato and ActivStat 3.0 focus on introductory level and community college students and faculty. Whether introductory or advanced, there are many additional links listed on pages mentioned herein for the interested statistics reader to explore.

REFERENCES

CrunchIt! 2.0. 2010. Available: http://crunchit2.bfwpub.com/crunchit2/_flash/

Cryer, Jonathan D. 2001. Problems With Using Microsoft Excel for Statistics. Paper presented at the Joint Statistical Meetings, Atlanta, GA.

Heckard, Robert F. & Jessica Utts. 2010. Resources on the Web for Statistics Students and Teachers. Davis, CA: University of California, Davis. Available: http://anson.ucdavis.edu/%7Eutts/statlinks.html

Institute for Statistics and Mathematics. 2010. Wein, Germany: WU Wien. Available: http://www.r-project.org/main/shtml

Lane, David. 2008. Rice Virtual Lab in Statistics. Houston, TX: Rice University. Available: http://onlinestatbook.com/rvls.html

Object Refinery Limited. 2009. Statcato. Available: http://www.statcato.org

Pearson Education. 2010.StatCrunch - Data analysis on the web. Available: http://www.statcrunch.com

Pezzullo, John C. 2010. StatPages: Free Statistical Software. Available: http://statpages.org/javasta2.html

Systat. 2008. Available: http://www.systat.com/MystatProducts.aspx

Velleman, Paul F. 2010. ActivStats for Business Statistics. Boston: Pearson.