Statgraphics Plus V. 5
by Manugistics Inc.System Requirements:
Pentium; 32 MB RAM; and Windows 95, 98, 2000, ME, or NT 3.5 or higher. Price: Standard edition: $749. Quality and Design: $999. Professional: $1,649. Contact:
Manugistics Inc.
2115 E. Jefferson St.
Rockville, MD 20852
Phone: (800) 592-0050
E-mail: sgsales@manu.com
www.statgraphics.com |
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You Don't Have to Be a Statistician
Statgraphics Plus V. 5
by Felix Grant D
etermining the best product in any market sector will always be a matter of determining the best application for a particular need. Software distributors recognize this and supply a wide
range of overlapping products fitted for different users and usage requirements. The particular strength of StatGraphics Plus Version 5 is its ease of use, which supports the quality
professional (not primarily a statistician) through a maze of powerful techniques and around many potential pitfalls.
The product comes in three main configurations (Standard, Quality and Design, and Professional). Although the Standard version offers a solid range of facilities for
routine business use, Quality Digest readers will want the more advanced Quality and Design version. Although some might require the extra facilities offered by the
Professional version, the middle-priced Quality and Design variant should be sufficient for most users.
Approaching matters from a technical graphics perspective, Release 5 is a strong contender for the title of "easiest to learn heavyweight package." An intuitive interface
is backed up by a systematic collection of unobtrusive but informative instruction and support tools, so that using it is easy, quick and hassle-free. There is a flexible
multipane workbook system, modeled on Macintosh modes of working, and an environment (now fully 32-bit) that offers generally "enabling" usability.
The areas of particular interest are on the Special menu, under the headings Quality Control and Experimental Design. The
Quality Control submenu offers main choices, from Pareto, process capability, gage R&R, and linearity/acceptance and acceptance sampling, in addition to charts and
plots (X-bar vs. R; S and S-squared; p, np, u and c; various moving average and cusum; toolwear and acceptance; and fishbone diagrams). There is little, in terms of
content, to surprise a quality professional here, but the implementation is both effective and ergonomic. Analyses are assembled step by step from user data and requirements.
The Experimental Design menu and associated help, usually murky areas in most generic statistics products, are particularly well-implemented. Nothing can make this
work a no-brainer, but the program takes a pretty good stab at it. Although users need to have some understanding of what they are doing, the program offers good
mnemonic prompts (to the basic principles, to design classes and to design creation, for instance), and the progressive dialogue makes implementation as painless as
possible. Users are led through the creation, modification, optimization, augmentation and analysis of their designs in a fairly unbreakable way. The available tools
successfully cover screening; response surfaces; mixtures; multilevel factorials; inner/outer arrays; single or multifactor categorical, hierarchical variance components;
and multiple-response optimization. Support kicks in at program start-up with StatWizard. It uses intelligent data-driven
dialogue to guide users toward appropriate actions, selections, transforms and analyses. This optional setting is invaluable for less confident users. StatAdvisor
interprets results and explains the statistical output. Similarly named StatFolio is a library system allowing analyses to be banked and
reused. StatGallery is a multipane, multipage combination of different text, numeric and graphics outputs in a grid display. StatReporter helps to produce and publish
reports from within on-screen results. It can be configured to generate HTML, PNG or JPG graphics and Java applet support for Web publishing. Updates to a local or
networked directory, or by FTP, automatically reflect changes. In designing such turnkey dissemination systems, there are trade-offs in the areas of simplicity,
appearance and speed. SGV5 has plumped for WYSIWYG reproduction of its on-screen appearance from a few mouse clicks, with graphic rendering, which leads to relatively large files.
StatLink is a successful addition of particular interest to industrial users. It allows interactive setup of user-specified periodic data polling. The source can be an SGV5
data sheet, the clipboard or any file for which there is an ODBC driver installed. For quick routine work, SGV5 has also acquired SnapStats, a version of the
instant-access summaries that has become increasingly popular in such packages. It's a well-thought-out implementation, smoother and more flexible than many.
Control of graphics options is automatically initialized and adjusted from a single multitabbed dialogue. It took me a while to figure out how to adjust X-axis labeling,
but in general, everything is smooth and effortless. Few packages provide such an instant and instinctive feedback exploration loop.
All in all, SGV5 is an excellent choice for settings in which statistics are a means, not an end--which describes most quality settings. It provides highly efficient and
effective support for overstretched expertise in meeting its objectives within schedule or budget, and you can't ask for much more than that. About the author Felix Grant is a lecturer and consultant in the United Kingdom. E-mail him at fgrant@qualitydigest.com . |
