Almost all of us have experience with statistical analysis at some point or the other in our personal or professional lives. This could be the analysis of financial data, sales data, marketing data or a simple survey conducted to see what kind of sweets children preferred after dinner. The most popular software for statistical analysis is SPSS which stands for “Statistical Package for the Social Sciences”. However, as most us will know, SPSS is a very costly application which is better bought through an institution/organisation rather than an individual. Even then you might have to book in time to access the software with the lab, library etc. as it only allows for a certain number of copies to be installed according to the purchase agreement. However if you are a student who is working part-time, you would want to analyse your data when you have the time (which could be 2am in the morning). Unfortunately, if you don’t have SPSS installed on your PC, this could turn out to be an almost impossible task. Although you could try to use a spreadsheet application to analyse your results, deep in your heart of hearts you know that a software such as SPSS could give you better results. So what are your options?
PSPP is a free and open source alternative to SPSS which will give you almost the same functionality as the expensive SPSS suit. More details on PSPP are available at
http://www.gnu.org/software/pspp/
Next - PSPP: a free and open source alternative to SPSS – Part 2 (How to install)
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