Comparison of Commonly Used Statistics Package Programs

Abstract

The specialized computer programs used in the collection, organization, analysis, interpretation and presentation of the data are known as statistical software. Descriptive statistics and inferential statistics are two main statistical methodologies in some of the software used in data analysis. Descriptive statistics summarizes data in a sample using indices such as mean or standard deviation. Inferential statistics draws conclusions that are subject to random variables such as observational errors and sampling variation. In this study, statistical software used in data analysis is examined under two main headings as open source (free) and licensed (paid). For this purpose, 5 most commonly used software were selected from each groups. Statistical analyzes and analysis outputs of this selected software have been examined comparatively. As a result of this study, the features of licensed and unlicensed programs are presented to the researchers in a comparative way.