SIDEBAR: Selected Suppliers of Math, Stat, And Graphing Software
Despite recent mergers among statistical software companies, scientists still have an embarrassment of riches when it comes time to choose software for analyzing and graphing data. There are literally dozens of programs out there, ranging from large, highly flexible packages to those focused on a narrow subfield.
Choosing the right program may be getting progressively more difficult, however, since software vendors seem to release new versions of their programs annually, with continually evolving sets of features. "The market is extremely competitive," explains Santanu Bhattacharya, director of software marketing for Microcal Software Inc. of Northampton, Mass. Microcal sells Origin, a technical graphing and data-analysis package. "If you're not bringing out a version every year, you're lagging behind," Bhattacharya says. "You're adding more things, but then you don't want to make it so cluttered that it would intimidate a user who is just ...
