Good Freeware or Very Cheap Program for Stats & Graphs ?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Hi.

I have a favorite stats package: Minitab, but it costs something like $1,000. I don’t have Excel; however, I find that it really is a hassle for data manipulation & statistics. (Plus, I don’t have the money for it anyway.) I got OpenOffice, but it’s spreadsheet is not very good, IMO. Excel does treat me well when it comes to creating graphs & stuff. Minitab is pretty easy, but the graphs don’t give such good options, IMO, and OpenOffice just sucks: after an hour of frustration, I could’t even create a graph, let alone one I like.

Does anybody know of a cheap, or preferably freeware, stats package that is super-easy to use, like Minitab; reasonably powerful (not necessarily as powerful as Minitab); and has an easy-to-use, crisp, functional, and attractive graphics component? If so, will you please point me in the correct direction?

Thanks!

2

There are a couple here that claim to be “Excel clones”. Not clear if they have the power to do the level of stuff you need to.

3

google “R for Windows” for a GNU package called ‘R’ that has a ton of the functionality of S+.

Looks like a couple leads turn up if you google GNU minitab, but I’m sure if they’re what you’re looking for.

Anyway, R is a powerful, free piece of software. I don’t know Minitab. . .like if it’s user friendly or anything. ‘R’ isn’t necessarily easy, but if you’ve used S+, it is.

4

You might try www.statcrunch.com

I used it for a class and it was free to me.

5

I’ll second R. It’s not necessarily simple, but it’s quite powerful.

There are books available to help you through the learning curve, as well as on-line user’s groups.

FWIW, I’m an epidemiologist, which means that I count as a statistician to everyone but a statistician.

6

Minitab does a student license for $99 or something. Might be worth registering for a fun class just for the licenses.

7

Hey! Thanks!