A Review of Systat 11

SYSTAT was first developed in the late 1970s by Leland Wilkinson, then a statistics professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago. The first PC/DOS version was produced in 1984, just three years following the sale of the first IBM/PC in August 1981. Wilkinson’s goal was to offer researchers a PC/DOS environment in which to develop and estimate a suite of descriptive statistics as well as a number of the most well-used statistical models. At the time there were few DOS-based statistical packages; major packages such as SAS and SPSS were still mainframe oriented. Wilkinson fashioned the SYSTAT language and program style after that of SAS. Even some quarter of a century later SYSTAT still has a SAS flavor, particularly its programming language. In 1987 SYSTAT introduced a separate graphics package called SYGRAPH. It was perhaps the most sophisticated statistical graphics package available at the time. Even though it was DOS based, its graphical capabilities far exceeded those produced using SAS and SPSS, who by then had come out with their own PC software. I first started to use SYSTAT in the late 1980s largely because of its associated graphics package. The Windows version of SYSTAT, called Version 6 for Windows, did not appear until 1996, a bit late in the competitive market of the period. I believe that its slowness in entering the Windows environment resulted in a substantial decrease in user base. Other packages such as StatGraphics, Statistica, Stata, and even SPSS had earlier exploited Window’s graphical-user interface (GUI), and had developed sophisticated graphical capabilities that were unavailable in the DOS environment. Even Macintosh-based packages such as Data Desk provided the user with an interactive graphical user interface. Over the years SYSTAT has added a host of new statistical capabilities. Unfortunately, however, SYSTATs advancements have not been as well recognized as have the enhancements made by other statistical packages. Partially this has been due to its late entry into the Windows environment—once a package falls behind it is difficult to resurrect. But other reasons have occurred as well. SYSTAT changed ownership several times during the 1990s and never received the appropriate marketing push to keep its name in the forefront. Perhaps the effort was made, especially with Version 6 for Windows, but many researchers had by then moved on to other packages. I must admit that I was one who ventured off to other software. Again, SYSTAT has continually been improving its statistical offerings as well as its interface. Over the years it has retained a loyal core of users who would not think of needing another package for their statistical work. With the 2004 release of Version 11, however, I believe that SYSTAT can and will attract a host of new users. Its list of capabilities is impressive, and the