Free statistical software

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Reviews of free statistical software

There are a few reviews of free statistical software. There were two reviews in journals (but not peer reviewed), one by Zhu and Kuljaca[1] and another article by Grant that included mainly a brief review of R[2]. Zhu and Kuljaca outlined some useful characteristics of software, such as ease of use, having a number of statistical procedures and ability to develop new procedures. They reviewed several programs and identified which ones, at that time, had the most functionality. At that time, several of the programs may not have had all of the desired ability for advanced statistics. Grant reviewed some of the programing features of R, and briefly mentioned the availability of other programs. One other paper reviewed statistical packages, mainly commercial, but includes R[3]. One article reviewed EasyReg and included a discussion of it's accuracy[4].

Only one review has compared the output of various packages[5]. In this review, all of the packages read either CSV (Comma Separated Values - text files in which all values are separated by commas) files or excel format. All of the packages gave exactly the same results for correlation and regression. The free software packages also gave the same regression results as did excel. One of the main differences among the packages was how they handled missing data. With the example data sets used in the review, and for the package versions available in November 2006 when this review was conducted, two packages, MicrOsiris and Epi Info, could read files with blanks for missing. Two other programs, Stat4U and WinIdams need something for the missing, like -9 or -9.99. The other packages could only handle data sets with no missing values.

Two websites that list software also have very brief reviews of each package. These two sites are StatCon[6] and by Pezzullo[7]. These sites mainly offer a brief list of the features available in the packages. Similarly, one bachelor's thesis compares the statistical procedures available on free statistical packages[8]. In this review, R had all of the procedures, OpenStat had 16, MacAnova had 15, and Microsiris had 12. The others had from 8 to 11 of the procedures.

There is also a journal specifically for statistical software[9], although the main focus is on commercial software, R and some coding snippets.

These free software packages have been used in a number of scholarly publications, so that at least various journals, NGOs or other organizations regard the packages as valid. For example, OpenStat was used in a research letter to JAMA[10] and in several published studies[11],[12],[13]. Irristat is used in this agricultural report[14], EasyReg is listed or used in these papers[15],[16],[17], various versions of EpiInfo were used in these papers[18],[19],[20] and WinIdams was used in these papers[21], [22].

While Microsiris doesn't appear to be used in academic research, the author of the program was one of the original authors of OSIRIS[23], which was the starting program from which WinIdams was developed[24]. The author of Microsiris also has also contributed or co-contributed several components to WinIdams[24].

  1. ↑ "A Short Preview of Free Statistical Software Packages for Teaching Statistics to Industrial Technology Majors" Journal of Industrial Technology (Volume 21-2, April 2005), Ms. Xiaoping Zhu and Dr. Ognjen Kuljaca. http://www.nait.org/jit/current.html
  2. ↑ Felix Grant, "Free Statistics Software, Yours, Free to keep....", Scientific Computing World, Sept/Oct 2004, http://www.scientific-computing.com/scwsepoct04free_statistics.html
  3. ↑ Edward J. Wegman and Jeffrey L. Solka. 2005. Statistical Software for Today and Tomorrow. http://www.galaxy.gmu.edu/ (listed as "A Guide to Statistical Software".
  4. ↑ Hwan-sik Choia and Nicholas M. Kiefer, Software evaluation: EasyReg International. International Journal of Forecasting. Volume 21, Issue 3, July-September 2005, Pages 609-616. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijforecast.2005.02.003
  5. ↑ Shackman, Gene. 2006. "Comparing free statistical software for data sets with no missing values" and "Comparing free statistical software, Handling missing data". Both available here "Free Software" http://gsociology.icaap.org/methods/soft.html
  6. ↑ List of free statistical software, Open Source & Public Domain Packages with Source Code. StatCon 2006. http://statistiksoftware.com/free_software.html
  7. ↑ Pezzullo, Free Statistical Software, 2009. http://statpages.org/javasta2.html
  8. ↑ Paivi Lankinen and Anna Tanhuala. 2008. Internationalization of Software Companies: Case - Le Sphinx, France. School of Business Administration, Jyvaskyla University of Applied Sciences. Appendix 1, Comparing free statistical software. https://oa.doria.fi/handle/10024/38544
  9. ↑ Journal of Statistical Software, http://www.jstatsoft.org/
  10. ↑ Future Salary and US Residency Fill Rate Revisited, Mark Ebell. Research letter in JAMA, September 10, 2008—Vol 300, No. 10, p1131-1132. http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/reprint/300/10/1131
  11. ↑ Differential gene expression patterns in cyclooxygenase-1 and cyclooxygenase-2 deficient mouse brain. Christopher D Toscano, Vinaykumar V Prabhu, Robert Langenbach, Kevin G Becker, and Francesca Bosetti. Genome Biol. 2007; 8(1): R14. http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1839133
  12. ↑ M Bielaszewska, B Sinha, T Kuczius and H Karch. Cytolethal Distending Toxin from Shiga Toxin-Producing Escherichia coli O157 Causes Irreversible G2/M Arrest, Inhibition of Proliferation, and Death of Human Endothelial Cells. Infection and Immunity, January 2005, p. 552-562, Vol. 73, No. 1. http://iai.asm.org/cgi/content/full/73/1/552
  13. ↑ C.D. Toscano, P.J. Kingsley, L.J. Marnett, and F. Bosetti1. NMDA-induced Seizure Intensity is Enhanced in COX-2 Deficient Mice. Neurotoxicology. 2008 November; 29(6): 1114–1120.http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=2587528
  14. ↑ FAO Plant Production and Protection Paper No. 174, Rome, 2003, Genotype x environment interactions. Challenges and opportunities for plant breeding and cultivar recommendations, http://www.fao.org/DOCREP/005/Y4391E/y4391e00.htm
  15. ↑ A Gambardella and Bronwyn H. Hall, "Proprietary versus public domain licensing of software and research products" (2006). Research Policy. 35 (6), pp. 875-892. Postprint available free at: http://repositories.cdlib.org/postprints/1865.
  16. ↑ Liu, Wen-Chi and Tsangyao Chang, (2008) "Rational Bubbles in the Korea Stock Market? Further Evidence based on Nonlinear and Nonparametric Cointegration Tests." Economics Bulletin, Vol. 3, No. 34 pp. 1-12. http://economicsbulletin.vanderbilt.edu/2008/volume3/EB-08C30021A.pdf
  17. ↑ Harumi Itoa and Darin Lee, Journal of Economics and Business, Volume 57, Issue 1, January-February 2005, Pages 75-95. Assessing the impact of the September 11 terrorist attacks on U.S. airline demand. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jeconbus.2004.06.003. Also available here http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Economics/Papers/Papers/2003/2003-16_paper.pdf
  18. ↑ Rahav G, Gabbay R, Ornoy A, Shechtman S, Arnon J, Diav-Citrini O. Primary versus nonprimary cytomegalovirus infection during pregnancy, Israel. Emerg Infect Dis [serial on the Internet]. 2007 Nov [date cited]. Available from http://www.cdc.gov/EID/content/13/11/1791.htm
  19. ↑ Chan P-C, Huang L-M, Wu Y-C, Yang H-L, Chang I-S, Lu C-Y, et al. Tuberculosis in children and adolescents, Taiwan, 1996–2003. Emerg Infect Dis [serial on the Internet]. 2007 Sep. Available from http://www.cdc.gov/EID/content/13/9/1361.htm
  20. ↑ ME Gyasi, WMK Amoaku, and MA Adjuik. Epidemiology of Hospitalized Ocular Injuries in the Upper East Region of Ghana. Ghana Med J. 2007 December; 41(4): 171–175. http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=2350113
  21. ↑ N. S. Sapre, N. Pancholi, and S. Gupta, Computational Modeling of Substitution Effect on HIV–1 Non–Nucleoside Reverse Transcriptase Inhibitors with Kier–Hall Electrotopological State (E–state) Indices, Internet Electron. J. Mol. Des. 2008, 7, 55–67, http://www.biochempress.com/cv07_i03.html
  22. ↑ Chawla, Anju. Exploring project selection behavior of academic scientists in India. Research Evaluation, Volume 16, Number 1, March 2007 , pp. 35-45(11). http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/beech/rev/2007/00000016/00000001/art00004
  23. ↑ Data Sharing for Demographic Research Knowledge Base, question on OSIRIS, University of Michigan, http://dsdr-kb.psc.isr.umich.edu/answer.html?i=1076
  24. ↑ 24.0 24.1 IDAMS, Internationally Developed Data Analysis and Management Software Package. WinIDAMS Reference Manual (release 1.3) UNESCO, 2008. Preface. http://www.unesco.org/webworld/portal/idams/html/english/TOC.htm
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