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Comparative study of 9 stats packages

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Bruce Weaver

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Apr 13, 2007, 4:35:35 PM4/13/07
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Here's an article that may be of interest to readers of these groups.


Keeling, Kellie B. & Pavur, Robert J. (2007). A comparative study of the
reliability of nine statistical software packages. Computational
Statistics & Data Analysis, 51, 3811–3831.

Abstract. The reliabilities of nine software packages commonly used in
performing statistical analysis are assessed and compared. The
(American) National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) data
sets are used to evaluate the performance of these software packages
with regard to univariate summary statistics, one-way ANOVA, linear
regression, and nonlinear regression. Previous research has examined
various versions of these software packages using the NIST data sets,
but typically with fewer software packages than used in this study. This
study provides insight into a relative comparison of a wide variety of
software packages including two free statistical software packages,
basic and advanced statistical software packages, and the popular Excel
package. Substantive improvements from previous software reliability
assessments are noted. Plots of principal components of a measure of the
correct number of significant digits reveal how these packages tend to
cluster for ANOVA and nonlinear regression.

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Bruce Weaver
bwe...@lakeheadu.ca
www.angelfire.com/wv/bwhomedir

Karl Ove Hufthammer

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Apr 16, 2007, 4:46:08 AM4/16/07
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Bruce Weaver:

> Keeling, Kellie B. & Pavur, Robert J. (2007). A comparative study of the
> reliability of nine statistical software packages. Computational
> Statistics & Data Analysis, 51, 3811–3831.

Very interesting. Thanks for the tip.

--
Karl Ove Hufthammer

Karl Ove Hufthammer

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Apr 16, 2007, 5:20:35 AM4/16/07
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Karl Ove Hufthammer:

>> Keeling, Kellie B. & Pavur, Robert J. (2007). A comparative study of the
>> reliability of nine statistical software packages. Computational
>> Statistics & Data Analysis, 51, 3811–3831.
>
> Very interesting. Thanks for the tip.

But too bad they used the relatively old version 1.9.1 of R. They stated
they used the latest version of each software package, but there has been
many releases of R since 1.9.1, some with great improvements in the
accuracy of its statistical functions. (This comment is not meant to imply
that the results for R 1.9.1 were bad; they were in general pretty good.)

--
Karl Ove Hufthammer

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