Spss verse excel

[Khoshravan]

I want to do some statistical analysis and probability calculations. my
professor advised me to use spss, which I am totally unfamiliar with. Does
this software offers functions that excel can not perform I prefer to do all
my analysis with Excel which I am used to it.

 

[omnicrondelicious]

Hi,

yes, SPSS is a significantly more specialized and robust application
for statistical analysis. To my knowledge, it and a competitor (SAS)
are the market standard for stat analysis - I've seen and/or used it
at clinical trial firms, marketing agencies, archaeology labs, and
education research. It can manipulate and analyze data in many ways
that Excel cannot, or at least, not as easily. It's also a mild pain
to learn how to use well. Depending on what your studies are, it may
be a very good investment to learn SPSS (or SAS). For one-offs or a
fairly basic analysis, Excel can be fine, of course.

..o.

 

[Jerry W. Lewis]

What is "market standard" depends somewhat on what market you are talking
about. But that designation should surely also include S-PLUS. Also Minitab
has a firm foothold with 6-sigma instructors.

R has come on strong in the last few years and according to Chambers at the
2004 Joint Statistical Meetings of the North American statistical societies
"is becoming the proto-standard system for developing and sharing new
statistical techniques". R is even free to download and use
http://www.r-project.org/

Since the OP's professor recommended SPSS, I would guess that the OP is in a
social sicences discipline where SPSS would have the advantage of familiarity
to those reviewing his work.

Hi,

yes, SPSS is a significantly more specialized and robust application
for statistical analysis. To my knowledge, it and a competitor (SAS)
are the market standard for stat analysis - I've seen and/or used it
at clinical trial firms, marketing agencies, archaeology labs, and
education research. It can manipulate and analyze data in many ways
that Excel cannot, or at least, not as easily. It's also a mild pain
to learn how to use well. Depending on what your studies are, it may
be a very good investment to learn SPSS (or SAS). For one-offs or a
fairly basic analysis, Excel can be fine, of course.

..o.

 

[Harlan Grove]

What is "market standard" depends somewhat on what market you are
talking about. But that designation should surely also include
S-PLUS. Also Minitab has a firm foothold with 6-sigma instructors.

....

There are a few others. I know Stata is used by some epidemiologists
and agg scientists (I have odd friends). And BMDP is still used in
clinical biology (and Berkeley's stats department had upper division
undergrads and grad students use for coursework back in the 1980s,
FWLIW.)

From what I've seen, SAS is used where mainframes are used and not

many other places. I've never met anyone who's used PC SAS who didn't
do so simply to speed up development of processes that'd eventually
run on mainframes.

 

[omnicrondelicious]

Jerry/Harlan - thanks for the elaborations.

cheers,
..o.

 

[Khoshravan]

My wife is going to use tis program. She is a nutritionist, and wants to
study some blood samples of firefighters for duty-stress related analysis. I
am familiar with Excel but her professor has recommended her to use SPSS.
--
Rasoul Khoshravan Azar
Kobe University, Kobe, Japan

What is "market standard" depends somewhat on what market you are talking
about. But that designation should surely also include S-PLUS. Also Minitab
has a firm foothold with 6-sigma instructors.

R has come on strong in the last few years and according to Chambers at the
2004 Joint Statistical Meetings of the North American statistical societies
"is becoming the proto-standard system for developing and sharing new
statistical techniques". R is even free to download and use
http://www.r-project.org/

Since the OP's professor recommended SPSS, I would guess that the OP is in a
social sicences discipline where SPSS would have the advantage of familiarity
to those reviewing his work.