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Statistics programs/Minitab alternatives

A

athraen

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 17, 2007
25
0
I'm taking a stats class and we're supposed to use minitab, but the current versions are Windows only, and I think the older versions aren't compatible with OS X 10.4, correct?
So, I'm wondering if anyone knows of any decent free alternatives. I don't think I need anything super powerful since it's just an introductory stats class.
 
Depends how comfortable you are using commands instead of a GUI, but I use R (www.r-project.org) all the time. Also, you can do (very) basic stats stuff in excel if you install the Data Analysis toolkit, although I don't have much experience with this as I abhor the use of excel for serious statistics work.
 
I actually downloaded and installed R, but have absolutely no idea how to use it. I don't really have any experience using commands. Is there a tutorial somewhere for R? Or some sort of GUI for it?

My teacher was like "If you have a Mac, well then you're SOL" and it makes me want to prove him (and the other Mac haters) wrong.
 
athraen said:
I actually downloaded and installed R, but have absolutely no idea how to use it. I don't really have any experience using commands. Is there a tutorial somewhere for R? Or some sort of GUI for it?

My teacher was like "If you have a Mac, well then you're SOL" and it makes me want to prove him (and the other Mac haters) wrong.
Click to expand...

there's an online manual, plus if you need to know what a particular command does then you can type help("command"). Best bet though, is if you know what statistical procedure you are trying to do, you can use google to find some example code.

Or you could as for help here.
 
gretl

Check out gretl for mac. You might need to have MacPorts installed to get it to work, and you definitely need X11. That said, I used it for some OLS regressions for a paper this semester and our team got an 'A' on the project. Not very good evidence, but hey. :)

It also has some integration with R, but I haven't tested that much.
 
R is best

R is one of the best statistics packages in existence. It's powerful -- suitable for statistics research -- and easy to use, once you figure out how. There are a bunch of beginning stats texts which use R (or S-Plus, which is almost the same, at least for simple things). Some of these books should be in your school library, if it's reasonably complete. Are you in a university with a statistics department? If so, ask someone in the department to spend 5 minutes showing you the basic syntax, and where to get more information.

Any statistics package will need some explanation, including Minitab. Some are easier to use than others, and R isn't the easiest. JMP is a good one, and there's a student version for $25 (or used to be, anyway). But if you can find some local help with R, it's the one to use.
 
I'm really super tight on money right now (textbooks or food?), so Fusion isn't really a good option. Plus my boyfriend has Windows, so I can use Minitab on the weekends if necessary, I just want something I can use at home.

I actually noticed today that my professor has R in his start menu, I asked him about it and he said it should do everything we'll need for the quarter except read the minitab data files. No big deal. I'm trying to install JGR, see how that goes. I just don't feel up to the task of trying to learn how to use the commands while I'm trying to learn statistics.

What exactly is gretl?
 
StatsPlus for Mac

You could try with StatPlus for Mac. If you are student you get pretty good discounts too. Easy to use interface, gells along nicely with Excel
 
GraphPad is relatively user friendly and good for learning as it has good explanations of the different stats tests. Its costs money but there is a 1 month free trial if thats any use.

R is probably the most useful skillset to pick up though not sure how hard it is (though will be learning soon!! ;))
 
There are hundreds of free tutorials, including videos etc for R. Start at the the R web site, which has a lot of free downloads. But searching YouTube is also very productive.

R can read minitab data files, But you may need to load an addin program.

If you don't want to learn the command line, you could probably do all you need with Rcmdr, or Deducer: two of the menu driven addins for R. Rcmdr needs the 64 bit version of R.

It can be a bit tricky to get started with R, but it's one of those skills well worth learning.

Graham
 
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