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SPSS was originally designed for social science where there are large data sets available. In most science and engineering, typically it is expensive and time consuming to run experiments and data sets are well controlled and limited therefore SPSS would not be applicable. The whole idea is to run the least amount of experiments to come up with the conclusion, that's what DOE is for.
Hi all,
From my experience most university Biologists are now using "R", and this is true of an ever growing number of Psychologists etc. as well. Last week there were over 6000 contributed packages for R, as well as a huge amount of on-line and print literature.
Experiments MUST be designed with good old logic, reasoning, and clearly stated assumptions. Computer programs just make the statistical data interpretation easier. They certainly dont ensure that the experimental design and assumptions are valid. It's frighteningly easy for someone with a weak understanding of experimental design and statistics to misapply a computer program and make all sorts of unfounded proclamations about what is or isn't "statistically significant". It's a dangerous tool in the wrong hands, and MANY scientists will admit that statistics was never their best subject in school.
I hated statistics. We did a module at university and I just couldn't get my head around it. The only reason I used SPSS was because somebody had created a patient database in it and I had to extract the information from it to go alongside my experimental results. Unfortunately that work never got finished and that was quite some time ago. I've been out of the experimental field for quite some time now. I've always looked at statistics as a tool I would learn to use upon the advice of people with more understanding of it.
Chi squared and Spearman's Rank are about my limits!
Hi all,
I'm definitely not a statistician, but I know enough to tell that a lot of published literature was carried out, and peer reviewed, by Scientists who didn't understand the implications of their results.