New Software For PCs Helps Take Anxiety Out Of Statistics

In the last few years, developers of statistical software have tried hard to reach the nonstatistician. User-friendly, menu-driven programs, with high-resolution graphics to visualize the results of statistical analyses, are becoming increasingly available. And while software packages may not take the place of a fundamental understanding of statistics, they can help improve the statistical literacy of a scientist who understands the basics. Many of the software manuals include detailed explanat

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These newer programs are a far cry from the statistics programs many scientists cut their teeth on in graduate school--programs with little or no graphics, driven by batch files of nonintuitive commands. Take, for example, a drug company researcher who is running an experiment comparing the effects of two drug formulations on two groups of rats, a control group and a group whose immunity has been compromised.

Traditionally, the scientist running statistics on this experiment had to write complicated programming instructions telling the computer what the experimental designs were; which treatments to compare; what, if any, data were to be left out; and any other information necessary to complete the run. The researcher had to construct a data file to the exact specifications of the program being used, and, finally, send the whole mess to a remote mainframe computer. The mainframe would then follow the instructions in the batch file, ...

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