statistiXL

statistiXL has been entirely designed and written by Alan Roberts and Philip Withers. Philip is a Professor in Zoology at the University of Western Australia. Alan has a Ph.D. in Zoology and currently works as a Systems Administrator for a national IT company in the United Kingdom. statistiXL was initially inspired by our frustration with the range of analytical tools that we had available for use in our own research. These tools seemed to suffer from a number of shortcomings in that they were either limited, overly complicated and/or very expensive. In the end we gave up trying to find the perfect package and decided to try and write it ourselves.

While we won’t try to pretend that statistiXL will be perfect for everyones needs, we do believe that it offers a number of distinct advantages over many competing products. Firstly it leverages the power and familiarity of a robust spreadsheet package that many potential users will already have installed on their PCs, Microsoft Excel™. With an ease of data entry, manipulation and calculation that many people will already be familiar with you can bypass much of the learning curve that standalone statistics packages will impose on you. The range of file management, formatting, manipulation and calculating tools already available within Excel™ will also far surpass those found in your typical statistics package.

Secondly, statistiXL has a very simple, graphical user interface that provides access to a wide range of powerful and flexible statistical tools. There is no need to learn complicated command line procedures or to decipher multiple menu systems full of cryptic options. Popup help is available for every control within each of statistiXL’s modules and in addition a fully indexed Help File is available that is packed with explanations and examples. The ease of use is startling, but the power of the statistics hasn’t been sacrificed.

Finally statistiXL is inexpensive. We haven’t had to waste time writing data entry programs etc because this is all provided natively by Excel™. Instead we have been able to spend a lot of time concentrating on the statistics. This, along with our desire to provide a powerful package that is easily affordable to schools and students, has enabled us to offer statistiXL at very low price (compare the price for statistiXL with the cost of other statistical packages of similar sophistication).