PSPP

Infobox_Software
name = PSPP


caption =
developer = GNU Project
latest_release_version = 0.6.0
latest_release_date = release date|2008|06|11
programming language = C
operating_system = Cross-platform
genre = Statistics
license = GNU General Public License
website = http://www.gnu.org/software/pspp/

PSPP is a free software application for analysis of sampled data. It has a graphical user interface and conventional command line interface. It is written in C, uses GNU Scientific Library for its mathematical routines, and plotutils for generating graphs. It is intended as a free replacement of the proprietary program, SPSS.

Features

PSPP includes the possibility to import Excel, Gnumeric, Postgres databases, OpenDocument Spreadsheet, Comma Separated Values, and ASCII files. It can export files in the spss 'portable' and 'system' file formats, and to ASCII files. It can perform T-tests, ANOVA, linear regression and a variety of other statistical operations. It also has extensive facilities for recoding, rearranging and manipulating data.

History

The PSPP project (originally called "Fiasco") was started so as to allow computer users to avoid the ethical problems imposed by SPSS. Under the terms of use of SPSS, not only are users forbidden from copying or modifying the program, but they may only use the software for a limited period of time. In later releases, SPSS has a built in digital rights management, which allow the program to run for about 6 months, after which time the licence "expires" and it will refuse to work until the licensee pays more money.

The author of PSPP considered this to be ethically unacceptable, so decided to write a program which would be functionally identical to SPSS, except that there would be no licence expiry, and everyone would be permitted to copy, modify and share the program.

Release history

* 0.6.0 June 2008
* 0.4.0.1 August 2007
* 0.4.0 August 2005
* 0.3.0 April 2004
* 0.2.4 January 2000
* 0.1 August 1998

Third Party Reviews

In the book "SPSS For Dummies", the author discusses PSPP under the heading of "Ten Useful Things You Can Find on the Internet" [ [http://media.wiley.com/product_data/excerpt/48/04701134/0470113448-2.pdf Facsimile of Book Index] ] .In 2006, the South African Statistical Association presented a conference which included an analysis of how PSPP can be used as a free replacement to SPSS [ [http://www.sastat.org.za/Conference-Programme-2006.pdf SASTAT conference programme] ] .

References

ee also

*Comparison of statistical packages
*gretl

External links

Official resources

* [http://www.gnu.org/software/pspp Homepage]
* [http://sv.gnu.org/projects/pspp/ PSPP project page at Savannah]

Third-party resources

* [http://www.spssusers.co.uk/Newsletter/1998/pspp.html Review by UK SPSS user group]
* [http://cict.fr/~stpierre/doc-pspp.pdf User tutorial from Toulouse University Computing Center (in French)]
* [http://research.gc.cuny.edu/wiki/index.php/Importing_SPSS_syntax_data_files_into_R_under_Linux_using_PSPP Using PSPP to import SPSS data into R]