StatView is a statistics application originally released for

Apple Macintosh The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple Inc. Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and ...

computers in 1985. StatView was one of the first statistics applications to have a

graphical user interface The GUI ( "UI" by itself is still usually pronounced . or ), graphical user interface, is a form of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and audio indicator such as primary notation, inst ...

, capitalizing on the Macintosh's. A user saw a

spreadsheet A spreadsheet is a computer application for computation, organization, analysis and storage of data in tabular form. Spreadsheets were developed as computerized analogs of paper accounting worksheets. The program operates on data entered in c ...

of his or her data, comprising columns that could be

integer An integer is the number zero (), a positive natural number (, , , etc.) or a negative integer with a minus sign ( −1, −2, −3, etc.). The negative numbers are the additive inverses of the corresponding positive numbers. In the languag ...

s, long integers,

real number In mathematics, a real number is a number that can be used to measure a ''continuous'' one-dimensional quantity such as a distance, duration or temperature. Here, ''continuous'' means that values can have arbitrarily small variations. Every ...

s, strings, or ''categories'', and rows that were usually cases (such as individual people for

psychology Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries between ...

data). Columns had informative headings; rows were numbered. Category data looked like strings (e.g., a column headed "sex" would have entries of "male" and "female", but these were coded by the application as integers). Category data were used to perform inferential statistical tests such as

t test A ''t''-test is any statistical hypothesis testing, statistical hypothesis test in which the test statistic follows a Student's t-distribution, Student's ''t''-distribution under the null hypothesis. It is most commonly applied when the test stati ...

ANOVA Analysis of variance (ANOVA) is a collection of statistical models and their associated estimation procedures (such as the "variation" among and between groups) used to analyze the differences among means. ANOVA was developed by the statistician ...

s, and chi square tests. To calculate statistics, a user clicked on particular column headings, designating them as an ''x value'' and one or more ''y values''. Then the user used the application's

menu In a restaurant, the menu is a list of food and beverages offered to customers and the prices. A menu may be à la carte – which presents a list of options from which customers choose – or table d'hôte, in which case a pre-established seque ...

s to choose

descriptive statistics A descriptive statistic (in the count noun sense) is a summary statistic that quantitatively describes or summarizes features from a collection of information, while descriptive statistics (in the mass noun sense) is the process of using and an ...

inferential statistics Statistical inference is the process of using data analysis to infer properties of an underlying distribution of probability.Upton, G., Cook, I. (2008) ''Oxford Dictionary of Statistics'', OUP. . Inferential statistical analysis infers propertie ...

. For example, a user's spreadsheet might contain columns for names of a

participant Participation or Participant may refer to: Politics *Participation (decision making), mechanisms for people to participate in social decisions * Civic participation, engagement by the citizens in government * e-participation, citizen participati ...

in a

survey Survey may refer to: Statistics and human research * Statistical survey, a method for collecting quantitative information about items in a population * Survey (human research), including opinion polls Spatial measurement * Surveying, the techniq ...

(a string), sex (a category variable), IQ (integer), and years using a PC (real). By designating number of years using a PC as an ''x variable'' and IQ as a ''y variable'', the user could then choose from a menu to perform a regression. The user then had to choose from another menu how to view the regression in a separate

window A window is an opening in a wall, door, roof, or vehicle that allows the exchange of light and may also allow the passage of sound and sometimes air. Modern windows are usually glazed or covered in some other transparent or translucent mat ...

, either as a table, in which case the regression equation and

were displayed, or as a scattergram, in which case a graph of the data and the regression line were shown. Contents of the analysis window could be copied either as text or as a

PICT The Picts were a group of peoples who lived in what is now northern and eastern Scotland (north of the Firth of Forth) during Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. Where they lived and what their culture was like can be inferred from ear ...

. StatView was initially distributed by BrainPower Inc from

California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...

. It grew up with the Macintosh, changing owners along the way. StatView 3 to 5 were distributed by Abacus Corporation. It was then bought by SAS which discontinued it in favor of JMP. The application continued to run under Classic emulation with Apple's

Mac OS X macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and la ...

, but could not run on Intel Macintoshes. , it still runs under OS 10.7.5 emulation using Basilisk II. StatView 2 was called ''StatView SE + Graphics''. It included ANOVA with one repeated-measure and, remarkably, a

factor analysis Factor analysis is a statistical method used to describe variability among observed, correlated variables in terms of a potentially lower number of unobserved variables called factors. For example, it is possible that variations in six observed ...

. In StatView 4, the user approach changed from touching the to-be-analyzed data in the spreadsheet to clicking on column names in a separate window. This lack of immediacy was compensated for by an increase in the number of statistical tests that could be performed and in the power of existing tests. For example, multiway repeated-measures factors could be included in ANOVAs, with the only limit being the memory allocated to the application. There were

ANCOVA Analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) is a general linear model which blends ANOVA and regression. ANCOVA evaluates whether the means of a dependent variable (DV) are equal across levels of a categorical independent variable (IV) often called a tre ...

and

MANOVA In statistics, multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) is a procedure for comparing multivariate sample means. As a multivariate procedure, it is used when there are two or more dependent variables, and is often followed by significance tests ...

too. StatView 4 also became available for PCs. Statview 5.01 for Windows runs without issue on Windows XP, Windows 7 Home and Pro, both 32- and 64-bit systems. (This does not appear to actually be the case, the only method on Windows 7 appears to be using XP Mode.) It appears to run without issue in Windows 8 under Classic Shell. Despite its lack of availability and support and the difficulty of running the application on Mac computers current in 2009, StatView still has some loyal users. A former StatView employee is sometimes able to rescue old data trapped in StatView formats and offers this service in exchange for charitable contributions to worthy causes.

References

Further reading