StatsDirect is a statistical software package designed for biomedical, public health, and general health science uses. The second generation of the software was reviewed in general medical and public health journals.

Features and use

StatsDirect's interface is menu driven and has editors for spreadsheet-like data and reports. The function library includes common medical statistical methods that can be extended by users via an

XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing data. It defines a set of rules for encoding electronic document, documents in a format that is both human-readable and Machine-r ...

-based description that can embed calls to native StatsDirect numerical libraries, R scripts, or algorithms in any of the

.NET The .NET platform (pronounced as "''dot net"'') is a free and open-source, managed code, managed computer software framework for Microsoft Windows, Windows, Linux, and macOS operating systems. The project is mainly developed by Microsoft emplo ...

languages (such as C#, VB.Net, J#, or F#). Common statistical misconceptions are challenged by the interface. For example, users can perform a

chi-square test A chi-squared test (also chi-square or test) is a statistical hypothesis test used in the analysis of contingency tables when the sample sizes are large. In simpler terms, this test is primarily used to examine whether two categorical variable ...

on a two-by-two table, but they are asked whether the data are from a cohort (perspective) or case-control (retrospective) study before delivering the result. Both processes produce a chi-square test result but more emphasis is put on the appropriate statistic for the inference, which is the

odds ratio An odds ratio (OR) is a statistic that quantifies the strength of the association between two events, A and B. The odds ratio is defined as the ratio of the odds of event A taking place in the presence of B, and the odds of A in the absence of B ...

for retrospective studies and relative risk for prospective studies.

Origins

Professor Iain Buchan, formerly of the

University of Manchester The University of Manchester is a public university, public research university in Manchester, England. The main campus is south of Manchester city centre, Manchester City Centre on Wilmslow Road, Oxford Road. The University of Manchester is c ...

, wrote a doctoral thesis on the foundational work and is credited as the creator of the software. Buchan said he wished to address the problem of clinicians lacking the statistical knowledge to select and interpret statistical functions correctly, and often misusing software written by and for statisticians as a result. The software debuted in 1989 as Arcus, then Arcus ProStat in 1993, both written for the DOS platform. Arcus Quickstat for Windows followed in 1999. In 2000, an expanded version, StatsDirect, was released for Microsoft Windows. In 2013, the third generation of this software was released, written in C# for the

platform. StatsDirect reports embed the metadata necessary to replay calculations, which may be needed if the original data is ever updated. The reproducible report technology follows the research object approach for replaying in "eLabs".

References

External links

StatsDirect Home page
{{Statistical software Biostatistics Health informatics in the United Kingdom Statistical software University of Manchester Windows-only proprietary software pl:Statistica