Page 41 - Applied Statistics Using SPSS, STATISTICA, MATLAB and R

20 1 Introduction

perform menu operations. SPSS and STATISTICA are examples of “closed”
products. At the other end we find “open” products allowing the user to program
any arbitrarily complex sequence of statistical analysis operations. MATLAB and
R are examples of “open” products providing both a programming language and an
environment for statistical and graphic operations.
This book explains how to apply SPSS, STATISTICA, MATLAB or R to
solving statistical problems. The explanation is guided by solved examples where
we usually use one of the software products and provide indications (in specific
“Commands” frames) on how to use the other ones. We use the releases SPSS
STATISTICA 7.0, MATLAB 7.1 with the Statistics Toolbox and R 2.2.1 for the
Windows operating system; there is, usually, no significant difference when using
another release of these products (especially if it is a more advanced one), or
running these products in other non-Windows based platforms. All book figures
obtained with these software products are presented in greyscale, therefore
sacrificing some of the original display quality.
The reader must bear in mind that the present book is not intended as a
substitute of the user manuals or on-line helps of SPSS, STATISTICA, MATLAB
and R. However, we do provide the really needed information and guidance on
how to use these software products, so that the reader will be able to run the
examples and follow the taught matters with a minimum effort. As a matter of fact,
our experience using this book as a teaching aid is that usually those explanations
are sufficient for solving most practical problems. Anyway, besides user manuals
and on-line helps, the reader interested in deepening his/her knowledge of
particular topics may also find it profitable to consult the specific bibliography on
these software products mentioned in the References. In this section we limit
ourselves to describing a few basic aspects that are essential as a first hands-on.

1.8.1 SPSS and STATISTICA

SPSS from SPSS Inc. and STATISTICA from StatSoft Inc. are important and
popularised software products of the menu-driven type on window environments
with user-friendly facilities of data edition, representation and graphical support in
an interactive way. Both products require minimal time for familiarization and
allow the user to easily perform statistical analyses using a spreadsheet-based
philosophy for operating with the data.
Both products reveal a lot of similarities, starting with the menu bars shown in
Figures 1.8 and 1.9, namely the individual options to manage files, to edit the data
spreadsheets, to manage graphs, to perform data operations and to apply statistical
analysis procedures.
Concerning flexibility, both SPSS and STATISTICA provide command
language and macro construction facilities. As a matter of fact STATISTICA is
close to an “open” product type, since it provides advanced programming facilities
such as the use of external code (DLLs) and application programming interfaces
(API), as well as the possibility of developing specific routines in a Basic-like
programming language.