Statistical Data analysis is used to answer research questions. It involves many steps and techniques; steps may involve data gathering, cleaning, and transformation; techniques may involve simple procedure such as descriptive analysis to complex procedure such as regression analysis and model building. On these pages, you will find useful information that will assist you in the analysis of your data.

Which Statistical Software to Use?

Which software you use depends on what you are doing. For instance if you are interested in generating some summary statistics like mean, median, frequency, etc. then all three of them (SPSS, SAS & Minitab) are good. If you are interested in Time Series analysis then SAS is recommended. The default graphics from Minitab are better than that from SAS or SPSS. If you want to design an experiment or carry out prospective power and sample size calculation Minitab or SAS are the best. If you want to generate an interactive pivot table then SAS and SPSS are the best. Of the three software SAS is heavily used in industry compared to SPSS or Minitab.  These are just some quick but non exhaustive guides to help you select the most appropriate statistical software depending on what you want.

SPSS

SPSS stands Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (IBM SPSS Statistics these days). IBM SPSS Statistics is a comprehensive, easy-to-use set of data and predictive analytics tools for business users, researchers, analysts and statistical programmers. 

• Simple Tests
• Advanced Modelling
• FAQs
• Which Statistics Test?
• SPSS for Beginners
• Request for Training
• SPSS On-Line Training Workshop

SAS

SAS stands for Statistical Application Systems (just SAS these days). SAS has many tools brought together including: Statistics, OR, Data and Text mining; just to name a few. Newcastle University has licence for 3 main products from the SAS Institute. These are SAS Base, SAS Enterprise Guide and SAS Enterprise Miner. 

Getting Started with SAS Base

Getting Started with SAS Enterprise Guide

Getting Started with SAS Enterprise Miner

Minitab

Minitab is a comprehensive quality improvement and predictive analytics tools for statistical analysis.

Getting Started with Minitab

School of Mathematics and Statistics

The School is responsible for the teaching of all Mathematics and Statistics degrees at the University. Some researchers may find some of the topics being taught useful for their research work. Short courses and seminars are also provided.

Industrial Statistics Research Unit (ISRU)

The Industrial Statistics Research Unit (ISRU) provide statistical service that some researchers may find useful.