SYSTAT

SYSTAT was first created in the late 1970s by a Chicago psychology professor named Leland Wilkinson. It was the first statistical program that ran on a Macintosh version with DOS and UNIX capabilities and was one of the first programs to run on Windows; it quickly became a prominent statistical analysis and graphics tool in the scientific community. In 1995, SYSTAT was sold to SPSS, an IBM® company, (r) formerly called PASW® Statistics, which in 2002 sold it to Cranes Software International, based in Bangalore, India. SYSTAT is currently represented in 38 countries and is managed from Chicago, Illinois. SYSTAT prides itself for being customer oriented by creating affordable academic packages, including a free student version called MYSTAT Both SYSTAT and MYSTAT are available for download on from the SYSTAT website.

SYSTAT version 12 is available on Windows 98 (or later) and requires a minimum of 128 MB RAM and 220 MB of storage. SYSTAT comes equipped with a vast amount of manuals (in PDF form), including a 2,200-page electronic textbook on Statistics I, II, III, and IV, as well as detailed examples, language references, graphics, and so on. The SYSTAT website also provides a toll-free telephone number and an e-mail link for any technical support issues one might have.

The commands in the SYSTAT task bar are set up in a format similar to SPSS, where most analytical tools are located under the “analyze” option. There, the user will find an option to run basic statistics, which include descriptive statistics (mean, [Page 1482]median, mode, range, N, sum, variance, skewness, Kurtosis, etc.); confidence intervals; hypothesis testing, which includes comparing the means (one-sample z test, two-sample z test, t test for single sample, paired sample t test, two-sample t test, and the Poisson test); homogeneity of variance tests (single and multiple); correlation (simple, canonical, and Cronbach's alpha); and proportion. Also under basic statistics one can find the options for resampling (bootstrap, without replacement, and jackknife), as well as N- and P-tiles. Regression analyses include linear (stepwise, least-squares, Bayesian, and ridge), as well as nonlinear, robust, logistic, two-stage least squares, and probit.

Univariate analyses of variance include analysis of variance (ANOVA), analysis of covariance (ANCOVA), and Hotelling's T2. ANOVA tests include one- and two-way ANOVAs and repeated measures ANOVA. Available post hoc tests include Bonferroni, Tukey-Kramer Honestly Significant Difference (HSD), Scheffé, and Fisher's least significant difference. ANOVA designs include nested, unbalanced, randomized block, complete block, mixed model, split plot, Latin square, crossover, and changeover. Multivariate analyses include multivariate analysis of the variance (MANOVA) and multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) with the options to run discriminant, cluster, or factor analysis.

Nonparametric tests available on SYSTAT 12 include Kruskal-Wallis, Mann–Whitney U test, sign test, Wilcoxon, Friedman, Quade, and two-sample Kolmogorov–Smirnov tests. In addition, SYSTAT 12 allows the user to check the normality of assumptions in ANOVA, regression, and general linear model (GLM) using the Kolmogorov – Smirnov (one sample), Shapiro-Wilk (two or more samples), or the Anderson-Darling (repeated measures) tests for normality.

SYSTAT offers a wide range of graphs and plots including histograms, bar, line, dot, profile, pyramid, density plots, pie charts, scatter and probability plots, matrices, maps, and function plots. The graphics PDF found on the start page of SYSTAT 12 screen offers a 528-page electronic textbook about the available graphics, how they are used in statistics, where to find them in SYSTAT, and how to interpret them. In addition, SYSTAT offers three-dimensional charts options for line, pyramid, bar, and histogram charts.

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