Macintosh statistical software

The Dead Zone: software that appears to have been abandoned

As Larry MacPhee pointed out, you can find some older Mac software at the Macintosh Garden and at the Macintosh Repository. You can run some older systems in virtual environments. Updated 12/11/2022.

Rescued from death!

PublishPlot

Price: $10
Software updated: January 2021.
Prior update (version 1): 2014
Current version: 2.5
Listing updated: February 2022

PublishPlot is back! Now in version 2! It is now a universal binary and available in the Mac App Store

MacRATS

Configurations OS X 10.6 or later; Terminal
Current Version: 10
Standard Price: $500, Pro $650

MacRATS works through Big Sur (11.3)—as of February 2022.

MacRATS (Regression Analysis of Time Series) is distributed by Estima. There was no full OS X version, but the OS 9 version was confirmed to run under Classic mode by Estima.

We’re still hopeful these will come back

SOFA Statistics

Listing updated Feb 2022; Code updated January 2021.
Version 1.54—but no Mac version in the 1.5x series.
Not signed; 64-bit

SOFA Statistics (Statistics Open For All) emphasizes ease of use, discoverability, and clean reporting. It can connect directly to database sources, or use data brought in from spreadsheets. The usual statistical processes are available, including one-way ANOVA, t-tests, signed ranks, chi-square, and R; nested tables can be produced with row and column percentages, totals, standard deviations, means, medians, and sums. All this in just 2 MB!

SOFA

SOFA Statistics is written in Python, using a wxPython widget toolkit. Statistics come via the Scipy stats module. Analysis and reporting can be automated using Python scripts, either exported from SOFA or written by hand. The downside of course is that you have to install it via the command line.

Data can be brought in from Google spreadsheets and CSV files. Dynamic charts use html, SVG, and Javascript.

The down side: Mac development has stopped. Hence its appearance in the Dead Zone.

DeltaGraph

Configurations: 68030 or later, OS 7-9 (older versions); Universal; betas may be Lion compatible
Not ready for OS 10.15 “Catalina”
Current Version: 7.13
Price: $299 ($199 academic); upgrades currently at $99 (download)
Listing updated: 4/6/2021
Software last updated: February 2018. Promises of a 64-bit release has been present for at least two years.
Published by: Red Rock Software

DeltaGraph is a dual-platform charting program developed on the Mac, now cross-platform; owned for a time by SPSS, it has been at Red Rock Software for years now. DeltaGraph now has Mac/Windows feature parity and statistical abilities including linear and nonlinear regression. (Amusingly, Cricket Graph did both in 1987.) In 2010, after four years, version 6 was finally released, with a revised interface, cross-platform-friendly files, support for third-party spot colors in PDF and EPS export, and international text support.

The software was last updated in February 2018, according to their site, so be careful. There were no apparent updates since February 2018 on either the Mac or Windows versions, which does not bode well for buyers. (As of March 11, 2020.)

Still dead as far as we can tell

Aabel

Configurations: OS X Mavericks, Yosemite, El Capitan, or macOS Sierra
Current version: 5.2
Cost: $1350 (EDU prices ~$400 cheaper); pricing has not dropped.
Provisionally pronounced “dead” by MacStats on March 11, 2020.
Software and Aabel web site updated November 2016. This listing revisited 2-16-2022.
Publisher/site: Gigawiz

Gigawez’ web site clearly says that the software is not compatible with High Sierra OS 10.13. It has been in “beta testing”  for quite some time. The Web site is dated 2017, with the last announcement in November 2016.

The learning curve is steep; operations are conducted in pipelines, making basic menus sparse, with modal dialogue boxes in which the work is done. There is no programming language. It loads Excel files, preserving variable names.

Robin Lake noted its ability to handle a large number of variables and its strong regression tools. Arthur Busbey wrote “this is the envy of more than one Windows person I have showed it to. It has some great niche graphics for the earth sciences that you can't easily get anywhere else. If you have a lot of data to plot, or repeated graphs of the same kind to draw, it's not very flexible. e.g. if you want to plot graphs with a large number of lines (something I do often) I have to go through and set colour of each line individually.”

Dr. Jake Bundy wrote, “Surprisingly useful for multivariate analysis... best feature is the popup window next to the graph sheet listing the variables in the worksheet. If you are interested in hunting for correlations (say), it makes it easy to set var1 as your X, and then use the arrow key to flick rapidly between var2 -> var3 ... -> varN, and watch the plots change.”

Aabel includes map trend analysis, cartographic projection, user-defined multipliers for scientific notations, and statistics plugins modules through a plugin SDK. Version 3 added K-means clustering, the Shapiro-Wilk test for normality, extended ANOVA, extended multiple comparisons, Fisher's z transformation, and much more.

ChartSmith

We wanted to like it, we really did, but we found the interface awkward and unnecessarily driven by OS X ideals. Keynote users may find the integration features handy; you can import data from Excel. The program has multiple axis types, trend lines, error bars, templates, support for Retina displays, and compatibility with Gatekeeper, and some bug fixes for AppleScript. Web site dead when we checked in March 2020.

Citrin

Citrin did interactive scientific graphing and curve fitting. Version 2.0, introduced in October 2009 (roughly two years after 1.1), added Snow Leopard compatibility, and much more. The program was either developed by or acquired by Gigawiz.

dr-ROC

dr-ROC performs summary ROC meta-analysis (Littenberg-Moses method) and other calculations on diagnostic test clinical trial data. It includes a pre-formatted results table and a variety of graphs with easy to use check-box options to display or hide various elements. Forest and logit plots included, along with post-test probability calculations. Menu-driven interface for analysis options including weighted regression and continuity correction. (No longer) available from Diagnostic Research Design & Reporting.

EQS

EQS was developed by Peter Bentler but is now distributed by MVSoft. On OS X, the UNIX version might run under the command line. In Europe, EQS is distributed by ProGamma. The company suggests using Boot Camp, rather than virtualization, to run their Windows version — last updated in 2014 with version 6.2 (version 6.1 dated to 2006). We’re not sure when the last update was, but it was set up for Windows 8.

Fathom

Fathom Dynamic Statistics was a software package designed for teaching basic statistics and data visualization in secondary and undergraduate classes. It appears to have been dropped around 2014.

GB-Stat

GB-Stat was a regression and time series analysis package. It was published by Dynamic Microsystems, Inc.

GraphClick

Similar to DataThief, it could retrieve the original data from a scanned graph or chart. GraphClick was surprisingly flexible, handling error bars, QuickTime movies (frame by frame), deformed axis systems, and numerous other quirks and specialties. As of 1/2021, the web site had disappeared.

GraphPad StatMate and InStat

Replaced by GraphPad Prism

MacAnova

Configurations Available: Intel processors (10.6+)
Current Version: 5.06.5
Unsigned and not 64-bit
Listing updated: February 2022 (software last updated June 2012)

MacAnova was a free, noncommercial, interactive statistical analysis program developed by Gary Oehlert and Christopher Bingham of the University of Minnesota School of Statistics. It is still available, but no longer maintained. Their web site notes:

MacAnova has many capabilities but its strengths are analysis of variance and related models, matrix algebra, time series analysis (time and frequency domain), and (to a lesser extent) uni- and multi-variate exploratory statistics. MacAnova has a functional/command oriented interface. The Macintosh and Windows versions also have several window/menu/mouse type features. Although the language and syntax are S-like, MacAnova is not S or R.

MacAnova is Intel native, and there is source code available. The program started up very quickly on a Intel Mini and had a fairly good menu system, which output visible code that we could copy and manipulate, or save and run later. It is almost similar to SPSS 4 in that regard, though better integrated into the system and lacking a separate output window. MacANOVA includes linear model and GLM routines.

Mediata Survey

Configurations Available: Mac, Windows
Final Known Version: 3.02
Price: $99
Listing updated 2-15-2022

Surveys were created from a desktop program, in php and MySQL (or PostgreSQL). Quite flexible. Usage was fairly clunky, with lengthy wizards. When the survey is previewed, the html source appears moderately wasteful, with a separate span for questions and question text; but we've seen worse. We were unable to create a survey script on the Mac without an SQL database, suggesting that you’re meant to create the survey on the server itself rather than creating on a desktop and then uploading, which is unrealistic for most people; but there are probably workarounds for that. (thanks to Nadine Macolini for finding this one)

MX

Mx was written by Michael Neal. Consigned to the dead zone in August 2010 due to six years without an update. When we checked in February 2022, the web site had been taken down.

PlainStat

Plainstat was created and designed by Iyus A. Muslimin, statistician and Mac developer, who lived in Bandung, Indonesia. It was an impressive online package but it disappeared in 2013 and seemed to be delivering malware in 2019.

Plot Digitizer

Plot Digitizer is a free Java program for digitizing scanned plots of data, from GIF, JPEG, or PNG; you manually select values by clicking on each data point (which may help in complex graphs that automatic software doesn't do well). It can also be used to digitize scaled drawings, orthographic photos, etc.

There is a semi-automatic feature, for data that trends from left to right; you can paint the data you want with a brush, and “the program will automatically sort out grid lines, noise, etc, and will attempt to digitize the line for you. This feat is accomplished with the help of the open source autotrace image vectorization program.”

Listing updated: 2/16/2022; program updated 10/27/2015.

Salstat

Salstat dates back to the early 2000s and runs on Python. Installing the free version on the Mac may require quite a bit of library-and-Python downloading. The free program, if you can get it to run, has presentable graphics, is relatively easy to use, provides a statistics with parametric and nonparametric tests, shows its own source code, does crosstabs, and “charts, imports CSV, HTML, XML, Excel, LibreOffice and SAS file formats, and can even scrape tables of data from web pages.” The source code listing claims a last-update date of 2014.

StatisticS (data mining software)

StatisticS had a full graphical interface, does a decent variety of analyses (no regression but it has survival and various comparison tests), and the company infers it’s geared to doctors looking to publish their results. ... Overall it’s a good buy - a bargain if you need what it can do - even if it requires some forethought to work with. As of 12/17/09, the company's web site had disappeared.

TSP

Econometrics statistics. The site disappeared sometime before our December 2017 check.

SSP (Smith’s Statistical Package)

Gary Smith’s Smith’s Statistical Package (SSP) was free and user-friendly; sadly, it seems to have ended development years ago, and the web site is no longer up. Last software update 2006.

MacOS Classic software

If you have any of this software already and want to run it, try using a Mac OS emulator such as SheepShaver (for OS 7-9), or vMac (for OS 6 or 7). Without an emulator, few of these programs can be run on a current Mac.

Package Notes (updated January 2017)
AppleTree Free program for fitting multinomial binary tree models to frequency data; file-compatible with the DOS MBT program.
BuildSim System design, simulation and analysis package by Tritera.
BMDP Purchased by SPSS; Mac version dropped; sold by SPSS.
Cricket Graph

Cricket Graph 1.32 works in Classic. It is still one of the easiest graphing programs, and has fast regression curve fitting that makes polynomial designs easy. CricketGraph files can be read by DataGraph.

Data Loom Free data visualization program for multivariate data by Carl Manaster.
FloStat Provided basic analysis; it is still published by Senecio Software (as of April 2010).
GLMstat

Shareware for generalized linear models with a graphic suer interface, spreadsheet-style data entry, many plots and diagrams, statistics, and saving of model specifications.

LISREL ("LInear Structural RELations"), developed by Karl Jöreskog and Dag Sörbom; the program for structural equation modeling for years. By 2008, all mentions of Mac versions were gone.
MacCATI MacCati was designed for web- and self-administered surveys, and ran in Java.
MacCurveFit MacCurveFit fits a regression curve to user defined functions using least squares. Pricing in 2010 was the same as it was in 2003. It’s gone now.
MacSpin First 3D data visualization program for the Macintosh (and perhaps any personal computer).
MathCAD General purpose math program
Minitab

Statistics package used mostly in education.

SAS The last port worked in Classic. JMP is still available on Macs.
StatSoft Statistica In May 2007, it was still listed for sale on their web site! Statistica once went head to head with SPSS. (In 2010 the Mac version was gone, along with price lists.)
STATsimple Shareware with descriptive stats, histograms, student’s t-test and linear regression, by Chris Pereira.
StatView
SuperANOVA
Abacus Concepts made these wonderful, ubiquitous programs; SAS bought the company and dropped them. StatView and SuperANOVA were fast, capable, and easy to use, but did not have a syntax language.
Erin Vang wrote, “Global Pragmatica still has a functioning copy of StatView 5 for Windows and can provide StatView data conversion to .txt, .xls, .jmp, etc. at a basic hourly rate.”
Systat Bought by SPSS Inc, Mac version dropped, sold.
ViSta Free program by Forrest Young, Mac version abandoned around 1999. Windows version later picked up by co-author Pedro M. Valero-Mora.
XLisp Stat XLisp-Stat was a statistics toolkit for researchers developed by Luke Tierney, University of Minnesota School of Statistics. The software home page was last updated in 1998 and the FTP link doesn't work.

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