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1998-06-24
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Statistics (LozStats) Manual Version 2.30
DISTRIBUTION:
Statistics version 2.30 is public domain. Anyone can use it
and you are free to distribute it - as long as you're not
making pots of money out of it! This version allows 20
variables and 150 cases.
Unfortunately it's still a bit rough around the edges.
Considerable development time was wasted because of a bug in
HiSoft Basic 2.00 that HiSoft were unwilling to resolve. As
a result I had to change to Blitz Basic 2.10 which is faster
but has required a massive conversion effort.
I'm sorry but I accept no responsibility for any
difficulties (crashes, inaccurate results etc.) you
encounter, as a result of using this software. If you have
any problems drop me a line and I'll see what I can do.
Contact .............. Lawrence Harrell
BNR Consulting,
drlove@ibm.net
BNR CONSULTING:
BNR Consulting are a group of freelance market analysts,
economists and transport/travel/tourism specialists with
worldwide experience. Depending on other commitments, we
are available as contractors and to conduct research for
clients in any part of the world - at competitive rates.
Particular specialties include:
~ Demand forecasting (prediction of consumer behaviour).
~ Designing, analysing and conducting market surveys
~ Report writing and presentation.
~ Stated Preference (Conjoint analysis).
~ Public transport planning
~ Computer demand models (basic programming and
spreadsheets).
For further information contact me at the above address.
INTRODUCTION:
I can only remember seeing one other statistics package on
the Amiga and that was in the early days (around 1987) and
it cost several hundred pounds. Although a number of
spreadsheets are available, none compare with Microsoft
Excel or Lotus 1-2-3 for (ugh!) Windows and spreadsheets are
not that easy to use for statistical analysis.
I do not intend to explain the statistical theory of the
tests - if you do not understand what the program is for -
this package is not for you. A good easy to understand
statistics book to accompany the program would be: "Business
Statistics, A Decision Making Approach" (1985) D.F. Groebner
& P.W. Shannon, published by Merrill.
INSTALLATION:
The program can be installed on hard disk or copied to your
own floppy disks. Please note that the program requires the
Topaz 11 font to be present in the Workbench "Fonts"
directory. Topaz 11 is provided on all Amiga systems.
BASIC OPERATION
Upon loading the program you are presented with the data
entry screen. If you have a compatible statistics file that
you wish to work on, select "load" from the pull down menu
and load the file. If you are creating a new file, select
"add variable" from the pull down menus. Continue until all
variables have been entered. Next select "add cases" and
type in the number of cases in your data set. If you are
not sure how many cases there are - type in an estimate (it
is easy to add or delete cases later). Your data entry
template is now complete.
Until the data has been entered all cells are filled with
the missing value, cells containing missing values are
ignored in the analysis. You can select the number that
represents the missing value from the pull down menus. The
default value is 99.
To enter/edit data move the cursor to the cell you wish to
change using the arrow keys. Now type the appropriate
number and move to another cell. The number is
automatically entered when an arrow key is pressed (you do
not need to press enter). Note that the number you have
type will not appear upon the screen until an arrow key is
pressed.
Now that the data is in, it can be analysed by selecting
"analysis" from the menus. A number of options are
available and most basic statistics (average, standard
deviation etc.) are produced using the "basic stats" option.
The best approach is to play around with the data set
provided (Test.sts) and see what happens.
IMPORT/EXPORT OF DATA:
One casualty of the enforced rewrite has been the loss of
the import/export facilty available in previous versions. I
hope to reinstall this in a later version.
LIMITATIONS - READ CAREFULLY!!
The program will not accept negative numbers and all
variables must have the same number of cases. The same
missing value has to be used for every variable. If you
enter very large numbers i.e. above 9999,999.00 screen
formatting can become a bit dodgy. Entering huge values
(like population figures) is best done by inputting, e.g.
12.1 for 12.1 million etc.. Although you can enter values
with more than two decimal places and they will be used in
the calculations - they will not be displayed in the editor.
The display is setup for NTSC 640*400. If you have a
monitor or SCART T.V. you may find that setting your
workbench screen to NTSC (Workbench 2.04+ only) makes the
screen more readable as well as saving memory and reducing
flicker. To do this move the NTSC monitor into your
devs/monitor drawer. Add the line "sys:devs/monitors/NTSC"
to your startup-sequence immediately before the line
"LoadWB". Now double click on the NTSC picture in
devs/monitors and go to prefs/screenmode. Select NTSC Hires
laced and then save. Now reboot. You may have to adjust
the workbench palette a bit to reduce flicker. As you would
expect I accept no responsibility if it blows up your
monitor, but it works on mine!
Very minimal graphics are included and at present results
cannot be output to a printer. One very cludgy way around
this is to use a screen dump program. You will make best
use of the program if you have a spreadsheet, such as Lotus
1-2-3 (on an emulator) or VIP Professional (very old). Any
graphs, barcharts etc can be produced using a spreadsheet.
I see no point in spending hours duplicating the graphing
facilities of the above spreadsheets.
The software is reasonably crashproof (I have used it a lot
with large data sets over the last nine years and during my
Ph.D.). The production of the later versions has resulted
in some substantial changes to code and some new bugs may
have been created. Furthermore if you try silly things -
you may be able to crash the program, so save your data
regularly. If you register by email I can let you know
about upgrades.
If you want to moan: remember what you paid for this program
and how much statistical software can cost!
FUTURE:
I hope to iron out any further bugs and add: better help,
data labels, spreadsheet import/export and a large number of
non-parametric routines - that have already been written
(released as part of version 1.00). Significant development
is only likely to occur as a result of a switch to another
OS eg: BeOS, pOS of MacOS...
VERSION 1.10 ENHANCEMENTS:
A number of changes have been made to the, 'Main' module
with this upgrade.
The program has been made more multi-tasking friendly and is
less processor hungry when waiting for user input.
There is a new title screen.
Control of the display while viewing data has been improved.
The amount of data that the module can handle has been
increased from 300 to 500 values.
A number of bugs have been removed from the regression
module that could give rise to, 'division by zero errors'.
The correlation matrix display has been enhanced.
A disk swapping bug causing, 'unknown volume' error has been
cured.
Some preparations have been made to merge the two modules at
a later date.
The Regression predictions section now works correctly and
is more closely linked to the generation of the regression
equations.
Finally it is easier to increase the number of cases in the
data.
VERSION 2.00 ENHANCEMENTS:
Program sets up its own hi-res interlace screen with flicker
minimising palette and selects Topaz 11 font for a
consistent appearance on all systems.
Better presentation and more user friendly.
Many algorithms speeded up.
Improved error trapping and a number of bugs removed.
Vastly improved data entry/editing.
Pull-down menus.
Ability to conduct analysis on single variables added.
Independent t test, coefficient of variation, minimum, range
and pooled standard deviation added.
Speech removed, beeps added.
Improved export of data.
VERSION 2.10 ENHANCEMENTS:
Various bug fixes.
ARP file requester added.
Data recode added.
Text input area cleared after error.
Data transform debugged and moved to data entry module.
VERSION 2.20 ENHANCEMENTS:
Fixed bug in add variables module.
Added Cross-tabs.
Improved User-interface.
VERSION 2.30 ENHANCEMENTS:
Rewritten for Blitz Basic 2.10, significantly faster.