Free statistical software

Free statistical software is a practical alternative to commercial packages. In general, free statistical software gives results that are the same as the results from commercial programs, and many of the packages are fairly easy to learn, using menu systems, although a few are command-driven. These packages come from a variety of sources, including governments, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) like UNESCO, and universities, and are also developed by individuals.

Some packages are developed for specific purposes (e.g., time series analysis, factor analysis, calculators for probability distributions, etc.), while others are general packages, with a variety of statistical procedures. This article is a review of the general statistical packages.

Brief history of free statistical software
Some of the free software packages are from governmental or NGO organizations, such as Epi Info, from CDC, and IDAMS from UNESCO. Some other software packages are from smaller or independent organizations or universities, such as Instat or Irristat. Another package, the R project is being developed by a group of volunteer individuals. A large proportion of free statistical software packages, however, are from individuals. Some of these software packages from individuals include Easyreg, MicrOsiris , OpenStat , PSPP , SOFA and Zelig.

At least one package, WinIDAMS, was developed for the purposes of making key technologies available to those who could not otherwise afford them, to empower development. OpenStat and Instat were developed as teaching aids,. Other packages were developed for specific purposes but can be more generally used. Examples are Irristat, developed for agricultural analysis, and Epi Info , developed for public health. Several of the packages, PSPP, R and Osiris don't appear to give any statements about why they were developed, other than just general use for statistical analysis.

These free software packages have been used in a number of scholarly publications. For example, OpenStat was used in a research letter to JAMA and in several published studies. Irristat is used in this agricultural report, EasyReg is listed or used in these papers , EpiInfo was used in these papers , R was used in these papers and WinIdams was used in these papers.

While Microsiris doesn't appear to be used in academic research, the author of the program was one of the original authors of OSIRIS, which was the starting program from which WinIdams was developed. The author of Microsiris has also contributed or co-contributed several components to WinIdams.

Reviews of free statistical software
There are a few reviews of free statistical software. There were two reviews in journals (but not peer reviewed), one by Zhu and Kuljaca and another article by Grant that included mainly a brief review of R. Zhu and Kuljaca outlined some useful characteristics of software, such as ease of use, having a number of statistical procedures and ability to develop new procedures. They reviewed several programs and identified which ones, at that time, had the most functionality. At that time, several of the programs may not have had all of the desired ability for advanced statistics. Grant reviewed some of the programing features of R, and briefly mentioned the availability of other programs. One other paper reviewed statistical packages, mainly commercial, but includes R. One article reviewed EasyReg and included a discussion of it's accuracy.

Only one review has compared the output of various packages. In this review, all of the packages read either CSV (Comma Separated Values - text files in which all values are separated by commas) files or excel format. All of the packages gave exactly the same results for correlation and regression. The free software packages also gave the same regression results as did excel. One of the main differences among the packages was how they handled missing data. With the example data sets used in the review, and for the package versions available in November 2006 when this review was conducted, two packages, MicrOsiris and Epi Info, could read files with blanks for missing. Two other programs, Stat4U and WinIdams need something for the missing, like -9 or -9.99. The other packages could only handle data sets with no missing values.

Two websites that list software also have very brief reviews of each package. These two sites are StatCon and by Pezzullo. These sites mainly offer a brief list of the features available in the packages. Similarly, one other web site compares the statistical procedures available on free statistical packages. In this review, R had all of the procedures, OpenStat had 16, MacAnova had 15, and Microsiris had 12. The others had from 8 to 11 of the procedures.

There is also a journal specifically for statistical software, although the main focus is on commercial software, R and some coding snippets.

In contrast, there are various reviews of commercial statistical software, such as a comparison between several major packages and a brief review of several packages.

Using free statistical software
Before using any statistical packages, it is generally a good idea to have a solid background in Statistics. Then the packages can be used to the best advantage, for example, to choose the most appropriate test, to make sure all the necessary assumptions are met, so that the appropriate conclusions can be drawn.

Once the statistical issues are understood, the next step is to decide which package to use. Most of these packages are menu driven, and can be learned a couple of hours at most, except R, which is generally code driven and requires a much longer time to learn, and to some extent CDC's Epi Info, which also takes some time to learn.

Several of the packages also have tutorials. These tutorials help with a basic introduction and learning the basics of programs. For example, CDC has these tutorials about Epi Info,. The CDC page also lists a video slide show tutorial from the University of Nebraska, and another site has on line training classes. R has a large number of tutorials and manuals, in English and other languages, and a faq site. A few of the packages have a email discussion lists including R and PSPP.

Most of the packages have on line manuals, guides or help pages. These manuals or guides are useful when there are questions about specific procedures or statistical tests. Some manuals or guides are for R, EasyReg , OpenStat , PSPP , Vista , WinIdams , , Microsiris and Zelig. The CDC EpiInfo site itself does not have a manual, but one faculty member from Emory's School of Public Health has an introductory manual.

Finally, there are a number of commercial packages such as SAS, SPSS and many others. Most of the major commercial and free packages have many statistical procedures in common. The main reason to use free packages is probably the cost.

Menu driven packages
Many of the packages have some kind of opening menu that is used to get or enter the data, manipulate the data, and select the statistical analysis.

Then after starting the program, people generally get data, either from previously saved data sets, or importing from some other format.

From this menu, data files in various formats can be imported. For example if the data is in CSV form (text with commas between values), the program recognizes the format and creates a data set from the CSV file.

Finally, people can use the program to do some analysis.

Command driven packages
A few programs, like WinIDAMS and R need commands for many of their procedures. WinIDAMS does have an interactive menu to read in data, but then specific statistical procedures need a set of text commands. For example, the text command lines for frequencies look like this:


 * $COMMENT basic freqs of testing data
 * $RUN TABLES
 * $FILES
 * DICTIN  = PD_data_idams.dic
 * DATAIN  = PD_data_idams.dat
 * $SETUP
 * FREQUENCY TABLES
 * PRINT=(CDICT)
 * TABLES
 * ROWVARS=(V21) CELLS=(ROWP,FREQS)

This set of commands identifies procedure (tables), the data set and dictionary (PD_data_idams.dat and dic) and the variables. The procedures all have various options outlined in the manuals.

Getting data
Most packages are able to import data from excel or CSV (text with commas separating values).

One consideration is whether there are missing data. Some packages, like PSPP and MicrOsiris, can automatically deal with the missing data. So for example, say one set of data look like this:

In this data set, Sam is missing age, and Sally is missing whether she was born in the USA. When some packages, like PSPP or MicrOsiris, read in or import the original data set, the packages will recognize that those values are missing, and do their calculations accordingly. MicrOsiris automatically assigns 1.5 or 1.6 billion to blanks as missing, and these values are excluded from analysis.

Other packages need a 'place holder', such as '-9' where there is missing data. Before the package is used to read the data, the data set has to be edited to put in place holder where there are missing data. So for example:

The data set includes '-9' and then people who are reading in the data need to tell the program that the -9 means missing data.

Limitations of packages
Most of the packages have limitations of some sort.

Variables in WidIDAMS are limited to 9 digits in length and so have to be manipulated before analysis. In the version of PSPP current as of April 2009, there are a limited number of procedures available, including means, frequencies, crosstabs, two non-parametric tests, t-tests, anova and basic regression. In addition, the output is, apparently, not easy to use as it cannot be copied and pasted to other applications, and it is not clear where, in Windows Vista, the output is saved. Several of the programs, including Easyreg, Epidata and Instat, do not appear to handle missing data or do not handle it well. While EpiInfo has many statistical procedures, correlation is not one of them. Rather correlation is found by regression. This means that EpiInfo will not produce a single table showing correlations among multiple variables. According to the Zelig installation manual, use of Zelig requires that R and several of it's libraries already be installed, and the installation also requires some degree of background in R. One limit of MicrOsiris is in handling the output. When calculations are complete, the output pages through the results, but various menu boxes also appear over the results, and so the results cannot be accessed. The output can be saved, though, as a text file and then used.

One limitation is specific to programs that were developed by individuals. Support for these programs is limited to the time that the author has available. While the authors may, and often do, respond fairly quickly when there are few people asking questions, if too many people ask questions or the author is otherwise busy, support would correspondingly be slower.

R is the work of a group of people so can have a lot of support. However, while R is powerful, there can also be a steep learning curve.