Statistical software for microcomputers: SigmaPlot 2000 and SigmaStat2
I cannot see any advantages for SigmaStat. SigmaPlot does indeed have many excellent features and any psychologist could feel proud of many of the graphs it produces (not the box plots). As to the competition, JMP-IN produces a similar rage of graphs (and a rotating 3D plot for factor analysis), but has much less flexibility about appearance in terms of colours, fills and other features of graph elements. It can also be difficult to make different graphs the same size appear neatly on the page. STATVIEW produces less graph forms, and does not perform the non-linear regression, but has similar excellent control of the colour, form and sizing of different graph elements. Both STATIVEW and JMP-IN have well implemented 'by variable' facilities and produce graphs well linked to their associated statistical analyses. SigmaPlot wins on the flexibility of its error bars. However, EXCEL and other spreadsheets are also well worth considering, as they produce the same range of graphics and are equally flexible over error bars. An experimenter would have to be very sure that the slight advantages in flexibility of presentation from SigmaPlot outweighed the hassle of having to totally re-organize their data.
Kornbrot
D
University of Hertfordshire. d.e.kornbrot@herts.ac.uk