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Open source statistics? Anyone? Anyone?

By | July 2, 2007, 9:42pm PDT

On the last day of school, we had a math department meeting. The teacher who will be running our statistics courses next year was thrilled that we would have a small, dedicated math lab at our disposal. However, when she asked me what software we had for teaching stats, I said, “Um, Excel?” There are a lot of open-source statistical applications floating around out on the web, none of which seem to have made it into any sort of mainstream setting. I was a statistical programmer in a former life and made a living programming in SAS, but you don’t get much more closed-source than SAS. SPSS and S-Plus are used across many industries as well, but share with SAS the distinction of being quite expensive. Stata is a bit cheaper, but I’m afraid I’ve blown through all of my technology money for next year and need something free (not just a bit cheaper).

OpenOffice Calc and Excel both have a lot to offer for basic statistics, and Maple can do some stats as well (fortunately, we’ve already licensed the latter two). However, students should get a feel for a real statistical application. My very limited experience with the open source offerings in this field put them as either cheesy and underpowered or command-line driven menaces. What’s out there, folks? What are you using in your math and social science classes for statistical analysis? Is Excel really the state of the art in K-12 stats education? Or are we doomed to license expensive niche applications that universities and corporations are happy to fund?

Talk back below and let us know what you’re using and how well it works for your students and teachers.

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Open Source, SAS Institute, Christopher Dawson

Chris Dawson is a freelance writer and consultant with years of experience in educational technology and web-based systems. In 2011, he became the Vice President of Marketing for WizIQ, Inc., a virtual classroom and learning network SaaS provider.

Disclosure

Christopher Dawson

Christopher Dawson is the Vice President of Marketing for WizIQ, Inc., by day and a freelance writer and educational technology consultant by night. Well, most of his colleagues at WizIQ are based in India, so really he's working with them whenever he can stay awake. He has worked for his local school district as a teacher and technology director, for the Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health, and for Biogen, Inc. (now Biogen-IDEC, Inc.). He has also consulted with STATNet and Cytyc Corporation and retains close ties with X2 Development Corporation (now owned by Follett Software, the supplier of the student information system he administered for several years). Follett is paying him a monthly honorarium to act as a presenter for their "SIS Voices for Student Achievement" community (he produces occasional blog posts and hosts a monthly webinar on the use of student information systems to inform data-driven instruction and school-wide change. He regularly purchases and/or recommends Dell hardware. This is because Dell makes good hardware and has truly committed itself to education in innovative ways, particularly with their "Connected Classroom" initiative. It isn't because he has dealings with the company through his role at WizIQ (which he does) or because they have provided him with long-term loans of a variety of equipment for in-depth testing (which they have). Intel (reference designer for the Classmate PCs he has implemented in his local schools) has provided him with long-term loans of Classmate PCs for testing, as have Dell and Lenovo with their educational offerings. He may report on any of these companies as his experiences with them have direct bearing on educational technology; positive reports are not necessarily an endorsement and he receives no direct financial compensation from these companies or any others. Intel paid all expenses for his attendance at the 2009 Intel Classmate PC Ecosystem Summit which he attended as the sole representative of the technology press. He was invited to attend in 2010 but his wife would have killed him if he spent 3 days in Vegas geeking out and left her home alone with a new baby. Acer provided him with a 50% discount on an Aspire One netbook in early 2009 after he tested it for 30 days through their educational seed program. He liked the netbook at the time but it has since broken and sits unused in his office. Canonical sent him Ubuntu lanyards, t-shirts, and mousepads for his kids. He stole one of the lanyards and proudly hangs his keys from it and occasionally features his 8-year old wearing an oversized Ubuntu t-shirt on his Facebook profile. Gunnar Optiks sent him a pair of computer glasses to evaluate for a holiday gift guide. He is wearing them now as he types this because they never asked for them back and they rock out loud. Seriously - they work brilliantly and make it much easier to spend 20 hours a day staring at an LCD. If they ever asked for them back, he would fork over the $99 and buy a pair. Microsoft gave him 2 free copies of Office 2010 professional, a desktop clock, and a useless book on Office 2010 when he attended the launch of Office/Sharepoint 2010. He occasionally uses the SharePoint lanyard they gave him instead of the Ubuntu lanyard for his keys, but feels dirty afterwards. Adobe provided him with a pre-release version of the CS5 Master Collection for evaluation and ultimately provided a full, licensed copy for ongoing testing of educational applications of this admittedly expensive software. Like the Gunnars, if the license expires or they come out with CS6, he'd actually go out and buy it himself. Which is saying something, because he's actually pretty cheap. Any other companies wishing to send him cool things to evaluate, wear, or otherwise adorn his kids are more than welcome to; he promises to disclose it here if he keeps any of the stuff. Finally, because WizIQ is a virtual classroom and learning network provider, Chris, as VP of Marketing, frequently interacts with, seeks out deals with, and directly or indirectly competes with a whole lot of LMS, SIS, and other Education 2.0 companies. In general, he'll limit his reporting about these companies to news that does not impact his relationship with them or with WizIQ. If he reports on them, it's because what they are doing is newsworthy or worth the attention of his readers and not because he's trying to broker some deal, damage competition, or otherwise advance his position in his day job. LMS and SIS companies, along with other online learning communities, are a pretty important part of Ed Tech. If he stops reporting on them completely, there won't be a whole lot left. He'll be sure to call out any overt conflicts of interest if they are unavoidable. Finally, Follett Software Company pays him a little tiny honorarium every month to present on their SIS Voices webinars and to write the occasional blog or discussion thread for them. Since Follett recently bought X2 (maker of an awesome web-based SIS that Chris just happened to have used, served in advisory groups for, and frequently reported on), this is probably also worth disclosing.

Biography

Christopher Dawson

Christopher Dawson grew up in Seattle, back in the days of pre-antitrust Microsoft, coffeeshops owned by something other than Starbucks, and really loud, inarticulate music. He escaped to the right coast in the early 90's and received a degree in Information Systems from Johns Hopkins University. While there, he began a career in health and educational information systems, with a focus on clinical trials and related statistical programming and database modeling. This focus led him to several positions at Johns Hopkins, a couple-year stint in private industry, teaching high school math and technology, and 2 years as the technology director for his local school district. Most recently, he started his own consulting business and is now the Vice President of Marketing for WizIQ, Inc., a virtual classroom and learning network provider. He lives with his wife, five kids (yes, 5), 2 dogs, and a hateful cat in a small town in north-central Massachusetts. Although he is no longer teaching, his roles with WizIQ and ZDNet allow him to continue helping students and teachers add value to education with technology rather than merely adding to the bottom line.
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Considered open source SOFA Statistics?
Grant Paton-Simpson Updated - 27th Aug 2009
A new open source option is SOFA Statistics (http://www.sofastatistics.com). SOFA Statistics has a GUI interface and the emphasis is on ease of use, learn as you go, and beautiful output. Packages are available for Windows and Ubuntu Linux but the system will work anywhere Python will. At the moment, SOFA Statistics will connect directly to MySQL, SQLite, MS Access, MS SQL Server, and PostgreSQL (no import required) or allow importing from csv or MS Excel.

Disclosure - I am the lead developer
View in thread
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Free Statistical Software
cnf 2nd Jul 2007
Chris,

Check this out. It functions very similarly to SPLUS and it's free, which is always a pretty good price for schools.

http://www.r-project.org/

Regards,

Neil
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Several programs
Jerry M. Gartner 2nd Jul 2007
Luke Tierney from the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science at The University of Iowa has a program called lisp-stat (lisp based) with an xlispstat package available for Xorg so you get a gui. A many many built in functions with the ability to define your own. Excellent documentation too. Look for the software links at http://www.stat.uiowa.edu/~luke/ . R is another extensive statistical program with pre-compiled binaries for Linux, mac, and windows. Again, extensive documentation and functionality at http://cran.r-project.org/index.html If you are looking for good graphing tool, have a look at rrdtool at http://oss.oetiker.ch/rrdtool/

If anyone is interested in Open Source in the University, Dr. Jeff Williams wrote a paper at http://www.gartnerwebdev.com/papers/open-source-in-the-university/ on the topic.
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you might want to check out this link...
Arm A. Geddon 3rd Jul 2007
http://www.linuxrsp.ru/win-lin-soft/table-eng.html#9

this is one link I always recommend. enjoy!! happy

gnu/linux...giving choice to the neX(11)t generation.
0 Votes
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Try some of these...
baudmax 3rd Jul 2007
A couple of options here...
http://gsociology.icaap.org/methods/soft.html

I know one of the professors at JSC uses Epi-INFO from CDC to do statistical surveys, etc for a statistics class...
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Open Source at NECC
rpaula978 3rd Jul 2007
At NECC in Atlanta last week, there was an amazing open source presence including Ubuntu and Red Hat among others represented as well as the MIT XO laptop available for test drives. There were also many sessions on open source tools in particluar one by David Thornburg. Go to http:www.tcpdpodcast.org/oss.html to find his list of tools. including

MVT - Math visualization tools
MathTrax - NASA math tool (which is extremely cool and provides auditory feedback)
Shodor - various math tools

Happy downloading!
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Stat software for cheap
ahenriks@... 3rd Jul 2007
Here is a very clever tool that can use Excel input

http://www.statcrunch.com/

The nice thing about this is that it is on the web and so the students can access their accounts from anywhere they can access the web. No excuses now! It has a very modest fee-nothing compared to SAS, SPSS, or Minitab.

Anne
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Visualizing statistics
cd2_z 3rd Jul 2007
This is a bit OT, but there is a quite good set of web pages describing the theory behind statistics (the bell curve in particular) and demonstrating how it works as a Java applet. The pages are by John Walker, of AutoCAD fame. He doesn't give you code, but shows you how you can build a bell-curve generator of your own using a mildly radioactive source (even stoneware dishes might be "hot" enough). See: http://www.fourmilab.ch/rpkp/experiments/pipeorgan/ . Just having the students run the Java on the web page piques their interest and makes it more real than just reading it (and builds up the curve faster than individual coin-flipping and tallying).
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Excel is standard
Pantalaimon 3rd Jul 2007
in all but the most specialist areas of industry.
Truthfully it would be very hard to justify teaching school-age kids anything else.
And I find it very hard to believe that your students will be working on projects so complex that Excel is not up to it.
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You got to be kidding me...
papoanaya 3rd Jul 2007
There is R, There is Octave, if you want to have full blown math, there is Singular and Scilab... If you want to use a spreadsheet, you can always use open office or gnumeric, they both have statistics capabilities and both open source...

There...
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Just say no
winston-smith 3rd Jul 2007
You may wish to check out this link before you proceed any further with excel. The bugs in excel are not at all difficult to trigger.

http://www.burns-stat.com/pages/Tutor/spreadsheet_addiction.html#excel

Cheers,

Winston
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The R-Project is what you need...
jbuberel 3rd Jul 2007
...for real statistics on Linux:

http://www.r-project.org/

-jason
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R with Rcmdr
chemicalscum 3rd Jul 2007
R is not just Linux but is cross platform and runs on virtually anything (Linux, Windows, OSX, Solaris, BSD etc). As it is a free implementation of the S language it is very powerful. It is command line driven and on its own could be difficult for a High School level audience.

R is better for graphics production than SAS and does produce superb statistical graphics. For a graphical interface to make it available to a more general audience, Rcmdr is the answer. It is cross platform GUI front end for R programmed in Tk/Tcl. It was written by Prof. Fox a Sociology prof at McMaster University. He uses it to teach introductory statistics to sociology undergraduate students.

His page about it is here:

http://socserv.mcmaster.ca/jfox/Misc/Rcmdr/
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Avoid Excel for stats
CJK Fossman 11th Jul 2007
To see why, download the pdf at:
http://www.stat.uiowa.edu/~jcryer/JSMTalk2001.pdf
0 Votes
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Recently Announced Resource for Tech Teachers
anonymous1825 11th Jul 2007
This was just announced this week:

CSTA Launches Nation?s Largest Online Database for Computer Science Teachers

Resources Help Teachers Stay Up to Date on Latest Innovations


Computer science teachers now have access to the largest collection of K-12 computer science teaching materials in the country, thanks to the Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA). The organization today launched its Source web repository and is offering the resource free of charge to its members through its Web site at www.csta.acm.org.

CSTA?s Source web repository offers more than 75 resources in a searchable, downloadable collection, including lesson plans, learning modules, code segments, presentations, and even complete course descriptions. Educators can also access information about how to promote their computing courses.

?The Source repository will be a constantly evolving database of teaching materials, launched by CSTA to make it easier for computer science instructors to incorporate well-researched and up-to-date material into their lessons,? said Chris Stephenson, executive director of CSTA.

All of the materials in the searchable database have been classified in accordance with the ACM Model Curriculum for K-12 Computer Science so teachers can easily identify resources to use for specific courses and student learning levels. Users can also search on keyword, author, and submission date.

All of the materials included in the Source repository have been reviewed by a volunteer committee of educators from all education levels to make sure that they are classroom ready and classroom appropriate

Stephenson notes that CSTA is also encouraging teachers and vendors who have created good curriculum materials for computer science education to submit these items for inclusion in the Source. ?The Source is completely vendor and software neutral and we encourage everyone to submit good materials to help improve teaching and learning,? said Stephenson.

The Source web repository and all of its resources are open to submission and viewing by anyone but free full-text downloads are restricted to CSTA members. Membership in CSTA, however, is free, and anyone can become a member by visiting the organization?s Web site at www.csta.org.

# # #

About CSTA

The Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA) is a membership organization that supports and promotes the teaching of computer science and the other computing disciplines by providing opportunities for K-12 teachers and students to better understand the computing disciplines and to more successfully prepare themselves to teach and to learn. http://csta.acm.org. CSTA provides its over 400 members with resources, research, and professional development opportunities.

About ACM

ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery http://www.acm.org, is an educational and scientific society uniting the world?s computing educators, researchers and professionals to inspire dialogue, share resources and address the field?s challenges. ACM strengthens the profession?s collective voice through strong leadership, promotion of the highest standards, and recognition of technical excellence. ACM supports the professional growth of its members by providing opportunities for life-long learning, career development and professional networking opportunities.
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re: SPSS is not at all out of range at $85 for students
murphbil 30th Oct 2007
I have used SPSS professionally alongside MS-Access and Excel and simply do not understand this complaint. Obviously the corporate version is out of sight but when we pay hundreds for Adobe Suite and MS-Office I do not understand the problem. There are many analytic operations that can be done much more conveniently and effectively in SPSS and the statistics are natural and self explanatory. My pet peave has been pivot tables in Excel. They have been cross-tabulations since the 40's and 5 words get you a table. My current government position does not include SPSS on the desktop and I hate to consider the hours I have wasted waiting for Access/excel to crank out a few simple tables that would have taken minutes in SPSS.
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RE: Open source statistics? Anyone? Anyone?
richard_mackrory 23rd Sep 2008
If you are still looking, check out Fathom for years 10 - 12 and Tinker plots for K to 9.

Outstanding product. Designed for teaching and very easy to use.

R is an international project which is sponsored by the University of Auckland. My statistics education mentor is the statistics education specialist at this university. Fathom is her recommendation. (She has no pecuniary interest, it is a Cliff Konold project).

In NZ an unlimited licence costs about NZ$2500 and kids can pay NZ$50 to load it onto their laptops to take home.
0 Votes
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Considered open source SOFA Statistics?
Grant Paton-Simpson Updated - 27th Aug 2009
A new open source option is SOFA Statistics (http://www.sofastatistics.com). SOFA Statistics has a GUI interface and the emphasis is on ease of use, learn as you go, and beautiful output. Packages are available for Windows and Ubuntu Linux but the system will work anywhere Python will. At the moment, SOFA Statistics will connect directly to MySQL, SQLite, MS Access, MS SQL Server, and PostgreSQL (no import required) or allow importing from csv or MS Excel.

Disclosure - I am the lead developer

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