Stat5810
Homework #7
Ann Glen Nancy Qian
Evaluation of (General) Statistical Software Web Sites
|
Minitab |
R |
SAS |
SPSS |
Xplore |
|
|
Contents of the Web Site: |
|||||
|
Features of the Software |
10 |
10 |
10 |
10 |
8 |
|
Demo / Examples |
10 |
0 |
10 |
10 |
0 |
|
"White Papers" (Technical Reports) |
10 |
0 |
10 |
10 |
0 |
|
Technical Support: |
|||||
|
*on-line (FAQs) |
8 |
10 |
10 |
10 |
9 |
|
*personalized |
8 |
0 |
10 |
10 |
0 |
|
Info on Updates |
10 |
10 |
10 |
10 |
10 |
|
Downloading Possibilities |
10 |
10 |
10 |
10 |
10 |
|
Availability of Extensions |
8 |
10 |
10 |
10 |
0 |
|
Known Problems with the Software |
0 |
10 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
|
Documentation: |
|||||
|
*books (by the software authors and others) |
9 |
10 |
10 |
10 |
10 |
|
* links that show how software is used elsewhere |
9 |
10 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
|
* on-line help & tutorials |
10 |
0 |
10 |
10 |
10 |
|
*on-line courses |
10 |
0 |
10 |
10 |
10 |
|
* support for instructors |
0 |
0 |
10 |
10 |
0 |
|
Pricing, Ordering, Downloading Information |
10 |
10 |
10 |
10 |
10 |
|
Information on training (courses, workshops...) |
10 |
0 |
10 |
10 |
10 |
|
Information on users' groups (contact addresses, e-mails...) |
8 |
10 |
10 |
10 |
10 |
|
Search Engines |
10 |
10 |
10 |
10 |
10 |
|
Quality of the Web Site: |
|||||
|
it should work! |
10 |
10 |
10 |
10 |
10 |
|
well-organized |
9 |
6 |
10 |
9 |
6 |
|
sensitivity of search engines |
8 |
7 |
8 |
8 |
10 |
|
easy to use / understand |
10 |
10 |
10 |
10 |
6 |
|
missing/broken links, how often down or unreachable |
10 |
10 |
10 |
10 |
10 |
Minitab
This site had several very good features that I really liked. It was very user friendly and easy to move around in. The directory was complete and all links had something at the end, on dead ends. The site scored very high in almost all of the categories that we were to rank. The only thing I found to be lacking was a category for known problems with the software. The category for support for instructors was not very good either! I liked this quite well for the ease of finding the features and tools you wish to work with. This site had a tremendous amount of documentation and training available. Overall I rate this site very high on the criteria we discussed in class.
R:
URL: http://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/R-CRAN/
The site is not at all attractive or designed to be eye-catching, it is just a collection of links to the software, extensions, etc. It is ONLY in the text only format (there is only one graphic in the entire site.)The software is free, thus not much money can go into making a fancy site like many of the others we looked at. I was frustrated at the apparent lack of documentation although I finally found some (but not under a link called documentation!!) and I felt even as a bare-bones basics site, it could have been better organized and more informative. However, you get what you pay for. :-))
SAS and SPSS:
URLs: http://www.sas.com and http://www.spss.com
Both SAS and SPSS have very well developed web-sites, as would be expected from companies producing such well used software. The sites covered the great majority of the desirable features of a site that we discussed in class, e.g. technical reports, technical support, information on updates, pricing, ordering and training opportunities. We were not able to identify known problems with the software or links that show how software is used elsewhere very easily. It took some time to find the features of the software in the SPSS site for those of us that had not used the site before, but after some searching, all was revealed. Overall, moving around in the sites, and the searching ability within the sites were very good. They were well organized and up-to-date.
XploRe
URL: http://www.xplore-stat.de/index_js.html
XploRe is a statistical software package that can be used for statistical analysis, research and teaching. The website of XploRe is, in general, very good.
Let's look at the content of the website:
From the product philosophy, we can find the features of the software, but no comparison with other software. There is information on downloading, ordering and pricing. Serial versions of XploRe are available. The online tutoring is available. There are FAQs. The update information is also available. The search engine works well. The online help is also available. There are several e-books available in this site.
The documentation of this website is not complete. We cannot find any links that show how software is used elsewhere. There are no examples.
The overall quality of this web site is very good. It works. The search engine is sensitive, there are no broken links. However it is not organized very well and we found it was somewhat difficult and time consuming to find the contents we were interested in. It is not easy to understand this site because of the jargon it used. There is no alternative format of the webpage.