Bill Miller's Free Statistics Site!
(With special thanks to John Pezzullo for sharing his site)
June 29, 2009
OpenStat is a general-purpose statistics package that you can download and install for free. It was originally written as an aid in the teaching of statistics to the students enrolled in a social science program. It has been expanded to provide procedures useful in a wide variety of disciplines. It is not a "finished" product but revised several times a year. The version is denoted by the month, day and year. For example 1.27.08 would indicate a revision released in January 27, 2008. The program is NOT to be used for commercial purposes and there is no warranty implied. Most users check results by hand or compare to commercial packages to which they have access to insure the results are correct. OpenStat has been successfully run on all versions of Windows.
Vista may pose some challenges for several reasons: (1) There are both 32 and 64 bit versions as well as the Home, Home Premium, etc. (2) Vista does not support the long-used help files with the extension .HLP used by many programs. One can however download a file from Microsoft (either 64 bit or 32 bit versions) that will let you read those files. (3) The "security" scheme used in Vista may block the reading and writing of files from various installed programs. One can identify "exceptions" to this security scheme to permit programs that would be otherwise blocked from executing as they should.
OpenStat is in a compressed file created by a free software program "INNO". The file is named OpenStatSetup.exe. After downloading the file, double click the file name (or use the Windows Run window) to begin the installation on your Windows system. I suggest that you do NOT select the option to create a desktop icon. By default the program and help files will be installed in a directory labeled C:\OpenStat. After you have installed the program you may open the folder where the program was installed and then click on the OpenStat.exe file to begin the program. Linux users may find that the free Wine software will allow them to run the program in their version of that operating system.
NOTES FOR THIS VERSION
: Because beginning users sometimes leave blank cells in their data grid or forget to define variables appropriate to the procedure they wish to use, a number of modifications have been made to the existing procedures. First, variables are checked for the correct "type" definition. For example, group codes and frequency counts are integer variables (type 1) while values that have a fractional part (floating point) are coded with type 0. If a variable is of the wrong type, the user is notified to change the variable definition and reformat the grid (Variables->Define and Edit->Reformat.) Secondly, each cell value in the grid is read and checked for an empty cell. If a cell is empty (no value or missing value) a warning is given and a value of 0 (if integer) or 0.0 (if floating point) is inserted in the grid. This, of course, might very well lead to an error in the results of the analysis. If this occurs, you will want to change the zero value to either a missing value (defined in the Options procedure) or enter a valid observation.You may be interested in what other users have said or asked and examine a sample of research articles published using OpenStat (or previous versions.) If so, click this link: OpenStatLetters
Click here to download the free version OpenStatSetup.exe (INNO Setup).
To dowload the Source file (Borland C++ Builder 5): OpenStatSrc.zip
A series of "manuals" (actually sections of a previous textbook) has been prepared for your use. There are 17 sections. Each has been written using Microsoft Word. Depending on your experience in the use of this or similar statistics programs, you may only need a few of these. The first section gives basic information on the installation and use of OpenStat. The second section is a statistics and measurement "primer" and can be used as a book by itself. The remaining sections give examples and some computational details for the various procedures used in OpenStat. These sections are useful for the examples they provide as well as detail in using a procedure. If you do not have the Microsoft Word word processor, I recommend that you download the free OpenOffice program from the WWW.OpenOffice.org internet site. Below are the links to these manuals. If you want them all in a .zip file, click on the last link labeled All Manuals:
A Statistics and Measurement Primer
The Matrix Manipulation System
If you want most of the above files as a single text book written in Microsoft Word format, click on the following link:
Statistics and Measurement Using OpenStat
Below is a link for downloading a zip file containing sample .tab and .tex files. Many of the examples in the above manuals utilize these files.
Click here to download sample .tab and .tex files.
If you want a small program to view images (.jpg, .bmp, etc.) and the source code (Borland C++ Builder, Ver. 5) click on one of the following links:
Click here for the setup files PicView.zip
Click here for the PicView source file PicViewSrc.zip
For a Pascal version of OpenStat using the Borland Delphi 5 program, you can download an INNO setup using the link below. The source code is also available from the source link. This program was developed much earlier (1993) and does not contain all of the features of the C++ version. It’s name is OS3. .
Click here for the OS3Setup.exe file.
Click here for the OS3Source.zip file.
NOTES FOR PREVIOUS VERSIONS: A new descriptive multivariate procedure known as Correspondence Analysis has been added. This procedure is used to analyze frequency data in a two-way table in a manner somewhat analogous to factor analysis. The format for input is similar to that for the RIDIT procedure. Additional "tweaking" of the matrix manipulation procedure is also included to improve saving of files.
The matrix manipulation procedure has undergone some major revisions. Included is the addition of a matrix operation SVD (singular value decomposition) and the change of all file saving and retrieval from binary files to text-type of files that can be viewed (and modified) with Windows NotePad program. This affects all matrix, column and row vector, scalar and script files. You will NOT be able to read previously saved binary files with this version. You should delete all previously saved .MTX, .SCA, .CVE, .RVE and script files if you use this version. A new procedure had been added to the nonparametric statistics group named RIDIT analysis. This procedure reads a table of frequency data that represents data collected on multiple experimental groups and a control group (column variables.) The frequencies represent the number of cases observed in an ordinal scale such as a Likert scale (row variables.) In addition, some corrections were made to the Matrix Manipulation procedure (saving matrices, vectors or scalars were previously incorrect.)
You should know that there are other free statistics packages as well as excellent instructional material for statistics on the internet. Explore these by visiting John Pezzulo’s site at http://statpages.org Here is a list of other possibilities: Sources.
Please send your comments, suggestions and report of any "bugs" to me at OpenStat@msn.com I need to know someone thinks this is worth the effort!
If you are curious about me, you can read my vita by clicking: Bill