Statistical Software Guide 93

[Armin Koch]

Announcing


The Statistical Software Guide '93/94


1. Intention

The first issue of the Statistical Software Guide
(Computational Statistics & Data Analysis (15) 1993, p. 241-
264) listed 80 entries, thus demonstrating a vivid interest in
this project. We appreciate the good cooperation with the
software developers and distributors. This is the invitation to
contribute to the second edition of the guide. These are our
aims and intentions: First, this undertaking provides an
overview of products in the field of statistics. Second, from
the structure of the guide, this publication presents a forum
for software producers to trace their developments, advances
and improvements year by year. Thus, the guide is intended to
serve as an up-to-date reference for trends and fashions in
statistical computing. A benefit for potential newcomers in
this field is the pure listing of relevant systems. The aim is
however to give an integral overview of the market and not to
provide a detailed or evaluating description of the products.

2. Publication of the information

Statistical software, as software in general, is subjected to
rapid modification, steady enhancement and extension. This
necessitates updating of the contributions to the Statistical
Software Guide each year. The guide is published in the
Statistical Software Newsletter that is part of Computational
Statistics & Data Analysis, the official journal of the
International Association for Statistical Computing (IASC).
The information necessarily is condensed and is provided in
extended form in a booklet that is published biennially and
offered with the proceedings of the SoftStat conference.

3. Covered topics and responsibilities

The entries in the guide give the name of the product, the
number of the current release and the software developer貞 full
name and address along with some classification of the type of
statistical software system (statistical analysis system,
special purpose program, subroutine library, knowledge-based
system in statistics, other). Further, it is specified for
which phases of statistical analysis computer support is
offered (planning, monitoring, data management, statistical
analysis, graphics, result presentation, others). Information
concerning the program貞 availability on different hardware
platforms (including the necessary operating system
environment) is requested. A field for the specification of
software costs is included. The classification of the
methodological capabilities of the system follows the ISI-
scheme for classification (mathematical methods, probability,
distribution functions, estimation, hypotheses testing,
relationships, variance analysis, design and planning of
experiments, stochastic processes, miscellaneous topics). One
reference for a product review can be specified for the
interested reader. We hope, the software developers will make
use of the additional free-form text field to describe features
that prove their product's uniqueness or to state what has
recently been improved or added.

As this information is supplied by the software developers or
their distributors the publishers rely solely on their
responsibility for the accuracy of the contents of an entry.

4. How to contribute to the Statistical Software Guide

The publication of the Statistical Software Guide is an
activity of the cooperating working groups Computational
Statistics of the German Region of the International Biometric
Society and Statistical Analysis Systems of the German Society
for Medical Informatics, Biometry and Epidemiology. All
correspondence and contributions have to be posted via
electronic mail. Please contact "v20 at vm.urz.uni-
heidelberg.de". We will send you detailed instructions for
contributors and an electronic mailing form.

The services of the Statistical Software Guide can be offered
free of charge at least for the next issue. Should you have no
access to electronic mailing services, please however send us
$10,-- (US) or DM 15,-- to cover our expenses. We then return
you a floppy disk (3,5'' formatted PC/MS-DOS) with the
electronic mailing form. Address of correspondence: Armin Koch,
Abteilung Medizinische Biometrie, Universitaet Heidelberg, Im
Neuenheimer Feld 305, 69120 Heidelberg, FRG (Fax: +6221-
564195).

The Statistical Software Guide '93/94 will be published in the
first issue of the 1994 edition of Computational Statistics &
Data Analysis. Deadline for contributions is October 1, 1993.