Statistical software

There are many different statistical software packages available on the market. The four most commonly used programs are SAS, SPSS, R, and STATA. Each has its own advantages and disadvantages. It is important to match the software to the statistical needs and available expertise to work efficiently and optimize results. Investigators may choose their software based on several factors: budget including both initial costs and maintenance costs, programming skills required and learning curve, learning resources availability, the ability to handle large databases, graphing capabilities, how widely it is utilized within the research community that affects the potential to share codes with collaborators, compatibility with an operating system, server setup and other computer software, customization, and customer support. We provide a brief introduction to the aforementioned statistical software programs, focusing on the major distinguishing features between them. We note that Microsoft Excel can also provide rudimentary statistics; however, in this chapter, we concentrate on the software programs dedicated to statistical analysis.