"Dennis Roberts" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message [EMAIL PROTECTED]">news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]... > i don't know the answer to this but ... i have a general question with > regards to using spreadsheets for stat analysis > > why? ... why do we not help our students and encourage our students to use > tools designed for a task ... rather than substituting something that may > just barely get us by? > > we don't ask stat packages to do what spreadsheets were designed to do ... > why the reverse?
This is an interesting discussion, but the line between a spreadsheet and stats package is not so clear-cut these days. If you look at how the major stats packages have developed over the last decade, you can see how they have copied more and more features from Excel. In fact almost all stats packages now boast of containing a fully featured built-in spreadsheet for data entry. Looking at the situation from another angle, why can't a spreadsheet be used for statistical analysis? Granted, some of Excel's built-in statistical functions leave a lot to be desired and should be used with care. But the Excel spreadsheet package is still head-and-shoulders above any other similar product in terms of ease of use, data entry and collection, presentation, programming interfaces, and it's excellent integration with the other Office applications. So if the basic spreadsheet component is sound, and almost all computer and non-computer literate users can use Excel without problems, why not just extend Excel's statistical capabilities with reliable accurate statistical add-ons? Many exist, and we develop a product called "Analyse-it" for this very purpose. I think the group should also remember than versions of SAS and SPSS from only a few years ago suffered from accuracy problems. McCullough published details of the problems in his articles for "The American Statistician" in 1999. Of course, the product developers have now fixed the problems which customers no doubt paid for in later upgrades. And yet these packages are still seen as the gold standard, taken for granted as accurate, even though these accuracy problems lurked for possibly 10 or 15 years until highlighted by McCullough! I am not saying the problems of Excel, a tool so widely used and taken for granted by most users, should not have its problems highlighted. But, to say that the whole Excel package should be dismissed in favour of a stats package which costs more, basically is a copy of Excel's spreadsheet functionality, and then has accuracy problems of it's own, is a little blinkered. A reliable low-cost statistics add-on for Excel can easily bypass these problems. _____________________________________ James Huntington, ..Analyse-it Software, Ltd. ......................................................... Analyse-it! accurate low-cost statistical software for Microsoft Excel. For more information & to download a free evaluation, visit us: http://www.analyse-it.com ================================================================= Instructions for joining and leaving this list, remarks about the problem of INAPPROPRIATE MESSAGES, and archives are available at http://jse.stat.ncsu.edu/ =================================================================
