Re: Statistics/graphing programs for scientists?
> I'm just about to get my doctorate in neuroscience,
> and I have have several large databases essential for my dissertation.
> For statistical analysis, I use Statistica for windows, and for graphing
> my data, I use SigmaPlot for windows. A call to all scientists out there
> - are there any native X-based programs that are as good as these?
> Although these programs are excellent, I would rather not trust my
> dissertation to the OS I have come to call Sir Crash-a-lot... My only
> other option is to use a windows emulator (like WINE)...
I don't believe there is anything in the same league as statistica. If you can tolerate a time warp of about 25 years I hear that a GNU equivalent of SPSS is been written. Ask some of the older staff members what they think of SPSS. Some of the modern methods of statistical analysis may not be supported.
No free unix program is going to provide the sort of on-line help, user interface or range of analysis methods that comes with statistica. Unix applications like octave are not going to provide any better statistical analysis than a spreadsheet.
I would be very wary of running statistica under WINE. Perhaps if you are running WIN98/95, you should consider stepping up to WINNT (actually the thought of running statistica on win95/98 is scarey). A carefully installed WINNT on a standalone non-networked machine that is rebooted every 24 hours or so is pretty reliable. Perhaps you should check what other platforms are supported by Statistica. There may be a SCO Unix version available. SCO is free for educational purposes.
Hopefully you are making a point of backing up all of your data and documents on a regular basis. Hardware can fail also.
Regards ....
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