XLSTAT

Kommentare: XLSTAT can be best described as the software for data science from beginner to advanced levels that can be operated without the need of technical guidance. Sampling, data preparation, exploratory data analysis to building prediction models with state-of-the-art machine learning algorithms generally encompasses a set of requirements: a clear objective, a software with all standard features and algorithms, intuition, technical guidance, and probably, also experience. With XLSTAT, the first one in the list alone is sufficient enough to successfully accomplish the goal; the rest is taken care of by XLSTAT. In the academic milieu, we regularly face the task of explaining students of how statistical models are built from a set of data and their specific applications accompanied by demonstrations in the classroom. This includes even spatial and time-series data. This tutoring approach goes a long way in encouraging students towards a dissertation project involving data-driven modelling. In this situation, undergraduates who only have some basic operational knowledge about Excel spreadsheets are easily drawn into using a data science platform which runs on the already familiar Excel and transforms their data in spreadsheets into powerful and efficient models. This is where XLSTAT becomes the default platform for data science projects. In short, XLSTAT is a workhorse for data scientists with a few simple mouse clicks and visualizing the response in every step as stunning graphics.

Vorteile: XLSTAT can process even spatial data as raster to CSV converted files and enables to prepare the data just like in Excel. Data preparation is the single tedious task which consumes most of the time in a data science project. XLSTAT has all standard features and algorithms of machine learning software which can be operated by editing simple spreadsheets.

Nachteile: Not suitable for processing a big dataset with 10 million rows such as high-resolution remote sensing images

Kommentare: I have used XLSTAT for more than 5 years for data analysis in the field of health sciences (basic, clinical and epidemiological research) with good results. I have tried to recommend the use of XLSTAT to other colleagues, but the cost of licenses and the need to renew the support / update service every year is a major obstacle. I have needed assistance for XLSTAT use several times, and the response of the support team has always been promptly and in a satisfactory way. I think that thanks to the fact that we are already many users of XLSTAT and that it has been several years since its launch -with which the costs of the initial investments have already been amortized-, they could lower the costs of the licenses, in order to encourage users to keep using this useful software, as well as to attract new users to this growing community.

Vorteile: Being an extension of the excel interface facilitates its use and is relatively simple. The output formats of the results are easy to interpret and to be used in other applications.

Nachteile: For the same reason that it is a program that opens within another (add-in for Excel, Microsoft), any change in the operating system or in the Excel itself impacts the performance of XLSTAT. Unfortunately, in recent yeas this has happened very frequently, leaving out those who has not contracted the support/update service, since in some cases it is possible that XLSTAT stops working completely. There is a real dependence on the support/update service even for basic operation.