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All of these packages provide some descriptive statistics; some provide an astonishing array of statistical tools. Also see:
Page update: 5/7/08 : updated SPSS
Aabel does numerous statistical routines but because of its primary emphasis, you can find our report in graphing and visualization software.
Configurations: 68000; 680x0+ FPU; PowerPC native; OS X
Current Version: 4.0 (standalone program)
Current version: 1.4-5 (R plug-in)
Price: Free
Listing updated: 4/4/2008
Program update: plug-in, October 2007
ADE-4 is a free, noncommercial, interactive statistical analysis program developed by Laboratoire de Biométrie, Génétique et Biologie des Populations in France. While the ADE-4 standalone program has been abandoned, a plug-in for R is available, free, and actively updated.
Configurations: 680x0 without FPU; 680x0 with FPU; PowerPC native; OS X; Universal promised by end of 2006 (yes, we know it’s 2008 now)
Current Version: 6.2 (OS X), 6.1 (OS 7-9)
Price: $715 normal, $430 academic (DataDesk).
Listing updated: 4/14/2008
An exploratory data analysis package, DataDesk is PowerPC-native but the company claims Intel support other than the random number generator. (800) 573-5121, +1-607-257-1000; fax:+1-607-257-4146
A downloadable demo version is available. The Mac version is at parity with the Windows version but neither has been updated for a while. DataDesk also sells as an Excel plug-in, DataDesk XL, on both Mac and PC (it may not be compatible with Excel 2008). The strength and weakness of DataDesk is its visual environment:
Data Desk brings fast, easy-to-use visual analysis to your desktop. It provides interactive graphical tools for exploring and understanding your data—for finding the patterns, relationships, and exceptions. While it implements many traditional statistics techniques suitable for data from planned experiments and sample surveys, Data Desk’s true strength is its powerful tools for data exploration. Its insightful graphic displays simplify intuitive investigation of your data. ... Extreme computational speed and linked views make Data Desk an unsurpassable tool for exploring any set of data—from a few hundred cases to a few million. You’ll see several different views of your data at once. Select points in one plot or table and see those points highlight instantly in all other plots. Modify a data value or parameter and see all relevant plots and table update immediately. Start at one level and drill down for more detailed views.
Dick Furnas wrote:
DataDesk was developed by Paul Velleman, Professor in Cornell's School of Industrial and Labor relations and a student of John Tukey from Bell Labs and inventor of many ideas and principles of exploratory data analysis.
DataDesk is superb for exploratory data analysis. The program emphasizes data analysis and content. A student version is bundled with several textbooks Velleman has been involved in writing. DataDesk was originally developed for the Mac and makes splendid use of drag and drop, clickable, live interfaces and everything a Mac User might wish for (you can lasso points in a graph and the data values from the underlying data tables will be highlighted, and vice/versa). The student version is light on multivariate statistics and enormous data sets.
DeltaGraph does nonlinear and linear regression as well as a number of other routines; the new owner, Red Rock Software, has committed to the Mac including Universal binaries. See our graphing page for details.
Configurations Available: Universal Binary
Current Version: 2.1
Listing updated: 8/2008
Program last updated 2006 or earlier
Fathom Dynamic Statistics is a software package designed for teaching basic statistics and data visualization in secondary and undergraduate classes. (800) 995-MATH; +1-510-595-7000; fax: (800) 541-2442, +1-510-595-7040
Configurations available: Mac-Intel (unsure if PPC is supported)
Current version: 6.0
Listing updated: 4/2008
Gauss is a widely used, “big-time” package...but let’s let Aptech Systems, the developers, say it:
The GAUSS Mathematical and Statistical System is a fast matrix programming language widely used by scientists, engineers, statisticians, biometricians, econometricians, and financial analysts. Designed for computationally intensive tasks, the GAUSS system is ideally suited for the researcher who does not have the time required to develop programs in C or FORTRAN but finds that most statistical or mathematical "packages" are not flexible or powerful enough to perform complicated analysis or to work on large problems.
Joel West, the creator of this site, wrote: “Gauss was never available on Macs before, and is considered the high-end statistics package for economic research. Here's a good third party resource for Gauss.”
Configurations Available: PowerPC; OS X
Current Version: 6.0.0
Program last updated: 2005 (6.1 “due in early 2006”)
Listing updated: 4/4/2008
GLMStat is a shareware package for generalized linear models with a graphic suer interface. Features include spreadsheet-style data entry, a large variety of plots and diagrams, descriptive and other statistics, and saving of model specifications. Downloads and registration are at the GLMStat web page.
Configurations Available: 680x0; 680x0+FPU; PowerPC native; OS X (Universal Binary); Windows and DOS
Current Version: 3.0
Price: Free
Listing updated: 2/2007
The G*Power software is a freeware package developed by Axel Buchner of the Institut für Experimentelle Psychologie, Heinrich-Heine-Universität. It has its own web page and online manual. Their Web site says:
G*Power performs high-precision statistical power analyses for the most common statistical tests in behavioral research, that is, t-tests... F-tests (ANOVAS, multiple correlation and regression, and any other F-test), and Chi2-tests (goodness of fit and contingency tables). G*Power computes power values for given sample sizes, effect sizes, and alpha levels (post hoc power analyses), sample sizes for given effect sizes, alpha levels, and power values (a priori power analyses), and alpha and beta values for given sample sizes, effect sizes, and beta/alpha ratios (compromise power analyses).
Steve Hyde (John Radcliffe Hospital, University of Oxford) noted that the program is very stable and powerful, and that the new interface is a great improvement over the past versions.
Listing updated: 1/2008
GraphPad Software, Inc. [(800) 388-4723, +1-858-457-3909; fax: +1-858-457-8141] sells several packages.
InStat 3 (OS8/X, PPC, $150) is an low-cost, easy-to use biostatistics software package .
Prism 5 (Universal, Leopard-OK, $595) is a multi-platform package that emphasizes biostatistics for laboratory work.
StatMate (2.0, OS8/X, PPC, $95) provides estimates of needed sample sizes: “quickly calculate the power of an experiment to detect various hypothetical differences. Its wizard-based format leads you through the necessary steps to determine the tradeoffs in terms of risks and costs”
GraphPad products appear to be under active, albeit slow, development. Substantial academic discounts are available.
Configurations: Universal Binary; past versions were 68000, PPC, etc. (Verified U.B. status by downloading.)
Current Version: 7
Pricey but has educational discounts, e.g. $499 for the full professional version
Listing updated: 4/24/2008
JMP is a statistics package emphasizing data visualization. JMP started out as a pure data visualization program with no syntax, but has progressed to the point where it is a credible competitor to the big shots of the PC stats world, Stata and SPSS, and includes its own syntax / programming language. JMP began on the Macintosh. A student version (JMP IN) is also sold separately. Demos are available. JMP is distributed by SAS Institute Inc.
Jay Lee wrote that he has used JMP for years, and is impressed with version 5.1, though he misses the Statview interface (unavailable in OS X):
JMP started life as “John's Mac Project,” hence “JMP.” You can easily use it for item response theory analysis, which is unavailable on any other Mac stats program. You can select single, double, and triple parameter models for dichotomously scored items.
Mattias Soop noted that, as of OS X 10.4.8, the final version of JMP 6 will run accurately under Rosetta, according to the company, which warns against using any earlier OS X versions. JMP 7 was released as a Universal Binary and is a safer bet; it also removes table size limits.
This graphing program will compute ANOVAs, including repeated measures ANOVAs, which aabel doesn't appear to compute. Synergy is committed to the Mac market. See their main listing on the Graphing page.
Configurations Available: 68000; 680x0 + FPU; PowerPC native; G3 and G4 specific; OS X native; Universal
Current Version: 5.05
Listing updated: 4/24/08
MacAnova is a free, noncommercial, interactive statistical analysis program developed by Gary Oehlert and Christopher Bingham of the University of Minnesota School of Statistics. Their web site notes:
MacAnova has many capabilities but its strengths are analysis of variance and related models, matrix algebra, time series analysis (time and frequency domain), and (to a lesser extent) uni- and multi-variate exploratory statistics. MacAnova has a functional/command oriented interface. The Macintosh and Windows versions also have several window/menu/mouse type features. Although the language and syntax are S-like, MacAnova is not S or R.
MacAnova is now Intel native, and there is source code available. We found the program started up very quickly on a Intel Mini and had a fairly good menu system, which output visible code that we could copy and manipulate, or save and run later. It is almost similar to SPSS 4 in that regard, though better integrated into the system and lacking a separate output window. This is certainly worth a download. MacANOVA includes linear model and GLM routines.
Configurations Available: 68000; 680x0 + FPU; PowerPC native
Current Version: 1.5.5
Price: Shareware, Australian $50
Listing update: 5-17-07
Software appears to have been abandoned in 2003
MacCurveFit is a package that does one thing: fit a regression curve to any user defined function using least squares. It was developed by Kevin Raner Software in Australia. There is a Windows version that appears to have ceased development at the same time as the Mac version (sometime in 2003), which is listed as being compatible with System 7 and up but is almost certainly not OS X native. You can apparently download a test version to see if it works. Pricing remains the same as it was in 2003.
The site says: "MacCurveFit is a scientific least squares curve fitting program. Data sets can be entered into a spreadsheet window, imported from programs like Excel or extracted from text files. Any function may then be fitted to the data and the fit displayed graphically. The functions can be defined by typing them as text and so the program is very flexible. There is also a choice of mathematical algorithms that can be used for curve fitting."
Current Version: 1.0
Configurations Available: requires Mathematica; claims to be PPC and MacTel compatible
Listing updated: 5-25-06
mathStatica is an add-on package for Mathematica which provides algebraic and symbolic solution to statistical problems. Thus, it is supported in the same configurations as Mathematica for the Macintosh. It is published by MathStatica Pty. Ltd.
The software is sold as mathStatica Basic (bundled with the associated book, Mathematical Statistics with Mathematica) and as mathStatica Gold ($69 upgrade from mathStatica Basic).
(two entries) See the special MacStats web page explaining the difference between various Mac versions of the R software. There are two packages of R; the better known one is (CRAN).
Configurations Available: PowerPC (thru 1.7); Universal Binary (2.3+); Linux
Current Version: 2.51
Price: Free
Listing updated 8/07
(See the next listing for another package called R.) This is an exceedingly flexible program, though some say it is hard to get started with; it is powerful and optimized for both PowerPC and MacTel, and is also available on Linux and Windows. A large number of libraries and built in routines are available. R will run many (if not most) S or S-Plus programs. The R programs and supplemental algorithms are distributed by the Comprehensive R Archive Network (CRAN), Carnegie Mellon, and other web sites. R will run easily on MacTel machines and loads very quickly. You may want to download the graphical user interface for the Mac as well at http://cran.r-project.org/bin/macosx/ - and we really recommend installing the R Commander interface too, though you'll need to run it under X11.
The R Commander interface can be installed using the built-in package installer (check Install Dependencies); you may also want to use the package manager to install the various file import features (which aren't installed by default). There is also a Java interface, JGR, designed for the Mac, but it doesn't really provide much assistance. R Commander is an X11 program, which means it uses an alien interface and has odd open/save dialogues, but if you get past that it offers menu driven commands not dissimilar from, say, SPSS, just a bit more awkward ot use. Well, a lot more awkward, because you can't see the output window and have no spreadsheet data view!
Configurations Available: 680x0 (version 3); PowerPC/OS X (version 4); could probably be compiled for Intel
Current Version: 3 / Developer Release 4d10
Price: Free
Listing updated: 3/2008 (software last revised 4/2007)
This R is a full-featured public domain software package developed by the University of Montreal. It is only available for Mac and VAX/VMS (click here to read more or download it). Version 4.0 is (as of February 2006) still under development by Philippe Casgrain and “developer” versions are being freely distributed to a wide number of sites.
Configurations Available: 68020 with FPU; PowerPC native; OS X (Carbon)
Current Version: 2.5
Price: Free
Listing updated: 8/07
Michael McLaughlin’s Regress+ is a free package that includes regression, stochastic modeling, bootstrapping and robust goodness of fit measures. The software and a tutorial are available at the Regress+ web site.
Regress 2.31 is available for older platforms, while version 2.5 is available for OS X and 9.2. Regress+ 3.0 is under development, according to Michael, who wrote: "it models distributions as well as equations and utilizes bootstrap techniques for goodness-of-fit tests and confidence intervals. It handles univariate models only." This program appears to cover every aspect of regression you can think of. It's graphically oriented but has strong statistics.
Good news from Michael McLaughlin:
Regress+ 3.0 is definitely under development although it is going very slowly. It will definitely be a Universal Binary and will be much better than the current v2.5.3, especially wrt speed. Tests show that v3.0 will be about 50x faster PER CPU (i.e.,. 100x for a dual-CPU Mac) compared to v2.5.3 on the same platform. Output graphics are a lot better, too — publication quality.
Unfortunately, I also have a day job which takes up almost all of my time. Added to that is what I am learning about new techniques and new algorithms, e.g., as of two weeks ago, I decided to change the PRNG (again!) to the new SFMT algorithm, replacing Mersenne Twister, since SFMT can use Altivec (or SSE2) instead of the main CPU.
Configurations Available: PowerPC native for OS 8, 9, OS X
Current Version: 10.0
Cost: $395
Last software update: 2006
Listing updated: 4/25/2008
SHAZAM is an econometrics statistical package developed and distributed by the University of British Columbia Department of Economics
+1-604-822-5062; fax: +1-604-822-5915
Their web site includes online interactive demos. The product also has its own newsgroup, comp.soft-sys.shazam. Support for Mac OS X is on their web site, and development appears to be ongoing, though there is noo mention of MacTel support. Their site says:
HAZAM for MacOSX is a Unix command line program running under the Mac Terminal Interface to Unix. Graphics are provided with a built-in interface to Gnuplot which is provided. Instead of using a Mac windows interface, you can also access SHAZAM for MacOSX using the RUNSHAZAM interface with your web browser. The RUNSHAZAM interface will allow you to run MacOSX SHAZAM without using any Unix commands.
SHAZAM is a comprehensive computer program for econometricians, statisticians, biometricians, sociometricians, psychometricians, politicometricians and others who use statistical techniques. ... The primary strength of SHAZAM is for the estimation and testing of many types of regression models. The SHAZAM command language has great flexibility and provides capabilities for programming procedures.
Current version: 16.02 (Universal Binary), Leopard compatible
Pricing: numerous options. some time-limited; add-on modules require their own upgrades
Listing updated: 5/7/08
SPSS is an industry-standard general-purpose statistics package with its own news group, comp.soft-sys.spss; see also Raynald Levesque’s independent SPSS Tools web site. Many key features require expensive add-ons which must all be updated separately when the main program is updated. SPSS has, since version 6, usually been released for the Mac long after the PC version, with many skipped releases, and patches/upgrades for older Mac versions can be hard to find.
SPSS is now written with multiple platforms in mind; the basic underlying code is shared across platforms and the interface is written in Java for minimal cost (and time) of platform sharing. SPSS is capable of nearly anything its Windows counterpart is and can easily exchange data files and, with some effort, syntax (with line feed adjustments via TextWrangler or MS-Write). SPSS 16 cannot read any older output files but the data and syntax files are fully compatible with older and Windows versions. There are some bugs noted in our SPSS review. SPSS 17 for the Mac is due later in 2008 and is supposed to have numerous improvements.
SPSS 6 and SPSS 4 NCV work in Classic on non-Intel machines; SPSS 10.08a can run under OS X on non-Intel machines if you:
Configurations Available: Mac OS X, 680x0; PowerPC native, LinuxPPC, MacTel/Universal
Pricing: Several versions depending on power, with Intercooled starting at $500 with hefty educational discount
Current Version: 10.0
Listing updated: 8/2007
Stata is distributed by Stata Corporation. Web pages are provided for the Mac OS and Linux products.
U.S.: (800) 782-8272 ; Canada: (800) 248-8272; +1-409-696-4600; fax: +1-409-696-4601
Stata is a simply amazing company for statistics. They quickly got a Universal version out, and they do updates about every two weeks, with automatic updates; they do simultaneous releases across platforms; and they don't demand that you buy extra modules after spending a packet on the main program, even though their price is considerably lower than that of SPSS. Stata's Mac support deserves serious consideration when making such an expensive and long-term decision.
More details are in our in-depth Stata 9 statistical software review. Stata 10 is similar but has more statistical features and better graphing.
StatCrunch is fairly unique - a full-fledged statistics program that is freely available for web-based use, currently without advertisements, with a $5 per user fee for use on your own server, or $5/six months. It has the usual range of basic statistics, from t-tests to regression to ANOVA and nonparametric tests, with a wide range of graphs also available, and works from Excel or text files. StatCrunch, though free, will also store your data within reason; it seems to work fine with Safari. For those with low budgets or infrequent needs, StatCrunch's fairly easy to use interface and price are extremely attractive (it also makes sharing data easy).
Configurations: Windows; Linux; 68K, PPC, and Universal Binary (OS 7 still available!)
Pricing: 50 euros ($66 at time of writing)
Current Version: 4.3
Listing updated: 8/2007 (thanks, Bill Prinzmetal and Olivier Mericq)
StatisticS has a full graphical interface, does a decent variety of analyses (no regression but it has survival and various comparison tests), and the company infers it’s geared to doctors looking to publish their results. It will run under Rosetta but with the usual potential accuracy issues. Data can be shown in spreadsheet mode and can be imported from Excel; it is smart enough to ask whether the first line contains value labels and the second contains definitions. Charting is instant and rather good and it's easy to restrict analyses by condition; clicking on a bar or a point of a chart leads you to the data window, and clicking in this window leads you to the complete observation. Overall it’s a good buy - a bargain if you need what it can do - even if it requires some forethought to work with.
Configurations: Java; should work on Intel and PPC Macs
Pricing: Free
Current Version: 1.06
Listing updated: 8/2007
Statistics101 is a giftware program designed to help learn probability and statistics the easy way—by simulation. “Gain deeper understanding of traditional statistics concepts and methods. Increase your awareness of the role of variability in probability and statistics. Learn and apply simple to very sophisticated statistical techniques without tables or complicated formulas.” Java program that runs cross-platform. Interprets and executes the simple “Resampling Stats” programming language. The original Resampling Stats language and computer program were developed by Dr. Julian Simon and Peter Bruce as a new way to teach Statistics to social science students.
Configurations: Universal Binary
Pricing: $10
Current Version: 1
Listing updated: 1/2008
Statistics Pro is an inappropriately named program designed for students; it provides brief pages on combinatorics, probability (with and without time), expected values, confidence intervals, and hypothesis testing. It also provides very limited data analysis and tables. It is aimed at people who are actually in statistics classes, as a way to help get through tedious calculations. Others will probably find it to have limited utility, though for $10 it might be worthwhile as a fast way to get quick numbers. The programs works very quickly on a modern Intel Mac.
Configurations: Universal Binary
Pricing: $200 (Excel 2004/2008 required)
Current version: 4.7
Listing updated: 4/2008
AnalystSoft’s package enhances Excel to do serious statistical work, including regression (linear, polynomial, stepwise, and more), normality tests, correlations, ANOVA, nonparametric analysis, Probit, Cochran Q, and numerous other tests; the user interface is a simple menu system, with just two menus (statistics and data) that hide a considerable amount of power.
This program is fairly simple to get to learn. Cleverly, it uses Excel itself - either Excel 2004 or 2008 - to deal with all the data handling, so the programmers can concentrate on the statistics. On the downside, using it is a bit clunky; you launch the program, which brings up Excel; then you select what you want to do, and it asks you to define the appropriate range in Excel. At that point, you tell the program to show the results, and it creates a new worksheet with the findings. It can be a real time-saver for this who normally work in Excel and would normally export their data to another stats program and then bring their findings into Excel anyway. We’ll have more information on this clever program later, after we figure out how to get it to do what we want it to.
Configurations Available: 68000; 68020; 680x0 with FPU; PowerPC native; X11
Current Version: 3.52
Price: Free
Listing updated 1/2006
XLisp-Stat is a statistics toolkit for researchers that is available on the Mac, MS-Windows and various UNIX systems (with the X window system). It was developed by Luke Tierney, University of Minnesota School of Statistics.
For complete information, see this page (updated January 2006). The program seems to have stalled.
Lisp-Stat is an extensible statistical computing environment for data analysis, statistical instruction and research, with an emphasis on providing a framework for exploring the use of dynamic graphical methods. Extensibility is achieved by basing Lisp-Stat on the Lisp language. Lisp-Stat extends standard Lisp arithmetic operations to perform element-wise operations on lists and vectors, and adds a variety of basic statistical and linear algebra functions. Implementations of XLISP-STAT, a version of Lisp-Stat based on the XLISP language, are available for the Macintosh, UNIX systems running X11, and for MS Windows (16bit versions and 32bit versions are available).
You may also want to look at general math software that can be used for statistics.
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Originally prepared by Joel West of the UCI Graduate School of Management. Copyright © 2000-2001 Joel West, Copyright © 2005-2008 Allpar, LLC. All rights reserved. Organizational change and organizational development articles ... Macintosh statistics software