Multivariate statistics is a subdivision of statistics encompassing the simultaneous observation and analysis of more than one outcome variable, i.e., multivariate random variables. Multivariate statistics concerns understanding the different aims and background of each of the different forms of multivariate analysis, and how they relate to each other. The practical application of multivariate statistics to a particular problem may involve several types of univariate and multivariate analyses in order to understand the relationships between variables and their relevance to the problem being studied.
SPSS Statistics is a statistical software suite developed by IBM for data management, advanced analytics, multivariate analysis, business intelligence, and criminal investigation. Long produced by SPSS Inc., it was acquired by IBM in 2009. Versions of the software released since 2015 have the brand name IBM SPSS Statistics.
R is a programming language for statistical computing and graphics supported by the R Core Team and the R Foundation for Statistical Computing. Created by statisticians Ross Ihaka and Robert Gentleman, R is used among data miners, bioinformaticians and statisticians for data analysis and developing statistical software. The core R language is augmented by a large number of extension packages containing reusable code and documentation.
gretl is an open-source statistical package, mainly for econometrics. The name is an acronym for GnuRegression, Econometrics and Time-seriesLibrary.
EViews is a statistical package for Windows, used mainly for time-series oriented econometric analysis. It is developed by Quantitative Micro Software (QMS), now a part of IHS. Version 1.0 was released in March 1994, and replaced MicroTSP. The TSP software and programming language had been originally developed by Robert Hall in 1965. The current version of EViews is 13, released in August 2022.
MedCalc is a statistical software package designed for the biomedical sciences. It has an integrated spreadsheet for data input and can import files in several formats.
Epi Info is statistical software for epidemiology developed by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia (US).
R Commander (Rcmdr) is a GUI for the R programming language, licensed under the GNU General Public License, and developed and maintained by John Fox in the sociology department at McMaster University. Rcmdr looks and works similarly to SPSS GUI by providing a menu of analytic and graphical methods. It also displays the underlying R code that runs each analysis.
The following tables compare general and technical information for a number of statistical analysis packages.
Dap is a statistics and graphics program based on the C programming language that performs data management, analysis, and C-style graphical visualization tasks without requiring complex syntax. Its name is an acronym for Data Analysis and Presentation.
IBM SPSS Modeler is a data mining and text analytics software application from IBM. It is used to build predictive models and conduct other analytic tasks. It has a visual interface which allows users to leverage statistical and data mining algorithms without programming.
Psychometric software is software that is used for psychometric analysis of data from tests, questionnaires, or inventories reflecting latent psychoeducational variables. While some psychometric analyses can be performed with standard statistical software like SPSS, most analyses require specialized tools.
Rattle GUI is a free and open source software package providing a graphical user interface (GUI) for data mining using the R statistical programming language. Rattle is used in a variety of situations. Currently there are 15 different government departments in Australia, in addition to various other organisations around the world, which use Rattle in their data mining activities and as a statistical package.
Free statistical software is a practical alternative to commercial packages. Many of the free to use programs aim to be similar in function to commercial packages, in that they are general statistical packages that perform a variety of statistical analyses. Many other free to use programs were designed specifically for particular functions, like factor analysis, power analysis in sample size calculations, classification and regression trees, or analysis of missing data.
CIETmap will be open source software under development by the CIET group to help build the community voice into planning. Currently no downloads are made available. CIETmap integrates epidemiological analysis tools with raster and vector mapping capabilities geared towards decision-making for planners. It includes a Windows interface with the statistical programming language, R.
LIMDEP is an econometric and statistical software package with a variety of estimation tools. In addition to the core econometric tools for analysis of cross sections and time series, LIMDEP supports methods for panel data analysis, frontier and efficiency estimation and discrete choice modeling. The package also provides a programming language to allow the user to specify, estimate and analyze models that are not contained in the built in menus of model forms.
JASP is a free and open-source program for statistical analysis supported by the University of Amsterdam. It is designed to be easy to use, and familiar to users of SPSS. It offers standard analysis procedures in both their classical and Bayesian form. JASP generally produces APA style results tables and plots to ease publication. It promotes open science via integration with the Open Science Framework and reproducibility by integrating the analysis settings into the results. The development of JASP is financially supported by several universities and research funds. As the JASP GUI is developed in C++ using Qt framework, some of the team left to make a notable fork which is Jamovi which has its GUI developed in JavaScript and HTML5.
