Updated January 6, 2021; added Wizard. These packages all provide descriptive statistics; some have an astonishing array of statistical tools. Also see free and open-source Mac statistics software and the big list of does this work on my system?
General purpose / easy to use / inexpensive
DataTank
Excel 2017 free download - PDF to Excel, Microsoft Excel 2003, Excel to PDF Converter, and many more programs. Excel Color Palettes Download Note 1: Macs. On the Mac OS, the process is slightly different. For whatever reason, you need to add the Theme Color file through PowerPoint. You basically follow the same procedure described above, but go through PowerPoint and the color palette will then appear in Excel. Note 2: Changing the Palettes. StatPlus:mac is most affordable solution for data analysis on Mac (with Excel and Numbers support). You will benefit from the reduced learning curve and attractive pricing while enjoying the benefits of precise routines and calculations. Mac/PC license is permanent, there is no renewal charges. Get a Quote Today. Most familiar Office Fluent Control Identifiers are compatible with Office for Mac. Some might not be available. For commands that are compatible with Office 2016 for Mac, see idMSOs compatible with Office 2016 for Mac. Support for COM add-ins that use custom ribbon controls: Available: Office 2016 for Mac doesn't support third-party COM add-ins. Perhaps the most common Data Analysis tool that you’ll use in Excel is the one for calculating descriptive statistics. To see how this works, take a look at this worksheet. It summarizes sales data for a book publisher. In column A, the worksheet shows the suggested retail price (SRP). In column B, the worksheet shows.
Cost: $600. Free trial. Free for students and postdocs.
License gives access to all updates.
Software last updated November 2019; made free for students, 2014. Listing updated 1/2021.
Published by: VisualDataTools.com
Winner of the 2005 Apple Design Award for Best Scientific Computing Solution. From their web site:
DataTank is designed for scientific visualization, data mining, and algorithm development, but it is flexible enough to be used for a variety of other uses as well. Like other scientific visualization programs DataTank uses OpenGL to draw 3D graphics, and supports transparency, interactive rotation, multiple light sources and camera positions. DataTank uses the strength of Quartz to generate publication quality vector-graphics as PDF/EPS or anti-aliased bitmaps for use in web pages and presentations. ... DataTank enables interactive exploration of large data sets. ... DataTank will perform incremental evaluation, treating data sets with millions of data points and hundreds of thousands of entries the same way as a simple data set that is typed in manually.
Dennis Kahlbaum wrote: “Excellent support. Program is extremely flexible and can be used for graphics, statistics, visualizations, etc; Can produce animations of contours (lines and shading) generated from variably spaced data. Can use ESRI shapfiles.” We add that it is scriptable.
Wizard / Wizard Pro
Sold through Apple Store: $80 (Wizard) and $200 (Wizard Pro)
Current Version: 1.9.x
Mojave safe / 64-bit / Catalina safe / Big Sur and M1 support promised / Signed
Listing updated: January 2021 (software still under development despite Wizard 2 release)
Wizard and Wizard Pro — not to be confused with Wizard 2 and Wizard 2 Pro — are surprising packages from Evan Miller (creator of Magic Maps) which is meant for quick analysis and visualization, without a tortured interface. Wizard imports data with stunning speed, and comes up with summaries (including appropriate graphs) instantly. We tested it with large databases, including the General Social Survey, and results were practically instantaneous. Wizard Pro supports Stata dictionary (.dct) and some SPSS command files (.sps), surprising features indeed! It also imports from Numbers, SAS, Excel, and even Microsoft Access — something that’s otherwise hard to do on a Mac.
Wizard is set up to instantly provide summary statistics and charts on large numbers of variables, and also does instant correlations and multiple regressions. It's a discoverable program that delivers a level of “pleasant uniqueness” we haven’t seen in a long time.
There is a Pivot interface for producing numeric summaries and saving them as their own tables, á la Minitab. Pivot functions include count, sum, mean, standard deviation, variance, min/max, and percentiles; tables appear or change instantly, and are far easier to modify than, say, in Excel. There is support for frequency weights, optional display of odds ratios, and various other improvements.
Wizard has full date support, Excel exports, numerous tests (Mann-Whitney and Kruskal-Wallis, 2-sample and N-sample Kolmogorov-Smirnov, Negative Binomial, Cox Proportional Hazards), double-precision storage for numeric data, and custom delimiters in imported text files. Following versions continue to increase the scope and quality of the program, on a regular and rapid basis. (Wizard Pro site) Wizard Pro Preview.
Wizard 2 / Wizard 2 Pro
Sold through Apple Store: $20/quarter (Pro, $130/year); upgrade discounts
Current Version: 2
M1 processor safe • Big Sur safe • Catalina compatible • Signed
Listing updated: January 2021 (software still under constant development)
Wizard 2 and Wizard 2 Pro — not to be confused with Wizard and Wizard Pro — are surprising packages from Evan Miller (creator of Magic Maps) meant for quick analysis and visualization, without a tortured interface. Wizard imports data with stunning speed, and comes up with summaries (including appropriate graphs). The new versions are incremental improvements over the original, with some surprising and well-implemented new features. Wizard Pro 2 Review.
One of those clever new features is being able to capture properly formatted data from sources as varied as SPSS and HTML — you can feed in a web page and get a table back. This is hard to do, and most software cannot do it, even web software. Wizard 2 also adds a QuickLook feature for SPSS data files, so you can preview databases from the Finder.
Other key improvements include larger graphics in the interface, a new Correlate module, new importers, and full optimization for Apple’s new M1 chip. The one downside is that the software has gone from a one-time-only price to subscriptions—$20/quarter or $50/year, with Wizard 2 Pro at $130/year. Upgrade pricing is in effect, in the form of a first-year discount (from $15 off for the first year for those upgrading from Wizard, and $70 off the first year for those upgrading from Wizard Pro). Even did promise that the original Wizard and Wizard Pro will continue to be supported, and will work on Big Sur and the new M1-based computers. Documents for the two versions will be interchangeable. That means users can decide whether to upgrade and join the subscription treadmill, or stay where they are now.
Wizard / Wizard 2
Updated in 2021
StatPlus
Configurations: Can be used with Excel 2004, 2008, 2011, 2016, or Apple Numbers; also has its own built in spreadsheet
Pricing: $195 commercial, $89 student, $119 academic; bulk rates exist
Current version: 6.8
Mojave / signed; 64-bit (yes)
Listing updated: August 2019
Software last updated: May 2019
StatPlus is a fast-loading program that has a small number of menus — one that launches Excel; one that provides statistical analyses; and one that manipulates data. The analyses menu provides simple, easily understood categories, and underneath those are submenus with the actual operations. It’s easy to learn, yet contains numerous statistical methods that are not normally provided by easy-to-learn software, including one, two, and three way ANOVAs, GLM models, and many other analyses. The Help system is fully developed, in a standard Mac format, and is moderately easy to read. Cleverly, StatPlus launches Excel automatically when you start it up, saving a step and making it seem more seamless.
The team moved to the US in 2013, causing some support issues, but has completely revamped their web site and issued new versions of the StatPlus, now supporting Apple Numbers as well as Excel. Excel 2016 support is coming along with a standalone version that has its own spreadsheet.
Acastat and Clarity
Configurations: Mac (10.7+), Windows
Acastat version: 10.5 (updated 9/14/20)
Clarity version: 1022.0.6 (updated 5/14/2018)
Listing updated: 12/2020
Compatibility: 64-bit (both programs)
Price: $20
Acastat handles up to 100,000 cases and 100 variables, depending on system memory. It runs on PPC machines with OS X 10.2 and up, or on Windows XP. It does frequencies (with chi-square goodness of fit), lists, descriptives (by subgroups), diagnostic accuracy measures, crosstabs with various related statistics, t-tests, one-way ANOVA, correlations, simple and multiple regression, logistic regression, and appraisal analysis. There’s a real estate module for tax assessments, and a setup to try to generate charts from inferred data in summary statistics.
The software appears to be easy to figure out and learn, providing most of the statistics that most people use day to day, and some that one has to pay extra for from SPSS. We did not test Acastat's accuracy but overall it appears to be a very promising entry. Clarity is similar, but has somewhat less functionality and costs $10.
Acastat StatCalc
Configurations: Mac , Windows
Version: 9.18 (updated 10/1/20)
Listing updated: 12/2020
Compatibility: 64-bit
Price: $6 (via Mac App Store)
StatCalc is designed to do the most common, basic tests: comparing means and proportions, showing frequencies and descriptives, doing weighted means, chi-squares, goodness of fit, and such. The Decision Tools module explores price elasticity of demand, queuing theory, constant dollars, and decision tables.
It is very easy to use, fast, and cheap — and continuously maintained. There is an iPad version, too.
GraphPad Prism - Prism Review
Current Version: 9 (released 2020)
64-bit: yes, starting with Prism 7 (Catalina compatible)
Price: via subscription only, $276/year; $174/year academic; $114/yr student; or $40/month
Listing updated: 10/2020; last code update, 10/2020
GraphPad Software [(800) 388-4723, +1-858-457-3909] sells Prism, a multi-platform package that emphasizes biostatistics for laboratory work. GraphPad’s CEO and founder, Harvey Motulsky, wrote: “We release new versions of GraphPad Prism every 3-4 years, and Mac and Windows development are done nearly simultaneously.”
GraphPad’s Prism is a strong platform for exploratory statistics and graphing, providing the usability of graphing software with many advanced statistical capabilities. Numerous graph types are available along with flexible regression curving. For more details, read our GraphPad Prism review.
Works from Excel
MegaStat
Current Version: 11.2
Requires Excel; works on Intel, PPC, Windows
Listing updated: 5/2017
Software last updated: 2017
MegaStat is maintained by J. B. Orris, Butler University, and distributed by McGraw-Hill. The software uses Excel only for “data entry, data transformation, printing, and file management,” but avoids using Excel’s disreputable math tools. The software has evolved from J.B. Orris’ Microstat; the current version is written in VisualBasic as an Excel plugin, though a standalone version is planned for the distant future.
MegaStat can deal with stepwise regressions, large factorials, time series/forecasting, descriptives, frequencies, nonparametrics, QPC sharts, and numerous hypothesis tests. In short, MegaStat packs all the power most people will ever need into a relatively inexpensive, easy to use package. The down side is that it’s moderately slow, has no scripting language, and requires Excel; and you may need to buy a textbook to get it, though J.B. Orris is considering a shareware or commercial version. On the Mac, some of the buttons and dialogues are hidden by formatting problems; but we tested MegaStat’s output to find that it was identical, to six decimal points, with that of Stata.
XLSTAT
Configurations: Mac OS X 10.6-10.11, Windows for Office 2011 and Office 2016
Pricing: Numerous versions and options. Base product/commercial license: $275.
Current Version: data not available
Listing updated: Jan 2017
XLSTAT runs inside Excel, and supports Mac OS X with Excel 2004 and X, with support promised for Excel 2011 after its release. Their calculations do not depend on Excel; the code is robust C++ code and the product has been on the market for ten years, with over 25,000 customers. There are numerous modules, all but three of which are available for the Mac; and there is academic and standard pricing, with perpetual and annual licenses. Modules can cost considerably more than the base program.
Big and comprehensive and priced accordingly
Stata
Pricing: Versions start at $445 (educational discount). There are government and educational discounts.
Current Version: 16
Mojave? Not on web site, which lists “10.11 or newer” only
64-bit only
Listing and software last updated: June 2019
Software is updated roughly once per year
Stata has frequent, automatic updates between releases, and simultaneous releases across platforms. Their price is much lower than SPSS, and there are no “gotcha” costs for extra modules. Stata's Mac support has been excellent for many years, unlike IBM/SPSS. (See our Stata 11 statistical software review.)
Stata is incredibly capable, with a macro language, a syntax language, a matrix language, a massive collection of user-contributed modules, Python integration, a spreadsheet for data manipulation, an advanced variable editor, copy and paste to word processors (without formatting), and extreme depth and breadth in statistical functions. Stata graphing is advanced and more “print-ready” than SPSS, surprisingly.
Stata now generates web pages with mixed text, graphs, and such, and supports Markdown and dynamic documents; it can generate Word, Excel, or PDF files, and has built in versioning. Version 15 brought an enormous number of new features including extensions to SEM, ERM, nonparametric regression, and spatial autoregressive models.
JMP
Configurations: Universal Binary; past versions were 68000, PPC, etc.
Current Version: 14
Price: $1,785 per year (sold by subscription)
Mojave? Yes, if the splash screen is disabled (see JMP for details); certified for High Sierra
64-bit? Available
Listing updated: 10/2018
Software updated: 2018
SAS Institute’s JMP started out as a Mac data visualization program. It now competes with Stata and SPSS, boasting syntax, journaling, and comprehensive statistics and design tools. There are full demos, and a student version (JMP IN).
JMP is responsive and launches speedily and feels like a real Mac program. Importing a large data file from Excel was almost instant and accurate, with correct variable types and names. Opening a spreadsheet of four variables and 30,000 entries was instant and, in the time it took for SPSS to do nothing, JMP had already run descriptives. Numeric output of JMP in our tests (which used 30,000 randomly generated 15-digit numbers) was identical to SPSS, Stata, JMP, and Megastat; JMP was the fastest of the group in 2009.
Regressions were instantaneous, including multiple multiple, high-resolution plots we could copy directly into Photoshop, summary of fit, analysis of variance, parameter estimates, residual plots, actual by predicted, etc ‚— using 30,000 cases. From the output window, we could copy tables and plots, and even change parameters or run additional tests from convenient submenus.
With JMP 10, SPSS import was greatly improved, and a large SPSS formatted file (the 2010 General Social Survey) was imported in just a few seconds; manipulations were still fast. We will be using that data set soon to re-compare SPSS, JMP, and Stata Intercooled.
Note: due to the crazy-high price, we don’t plan to review newer versions of JMP.
JMP Review • JMP 10 changes
We didn’t realize just how fast Stata was until we analyzed the General Social Survey with it. JMP is absurdly fast; graphing a 3D scatterplot of three variables, with 2,400 cases of each, was instant, and we could then rotate the plots in real time.
As a side note, SAS had purchased the popular Mac program StatView from Abacusl which had bought it from BrainPower; but SAS quickly killed it, preferring its own JMP. StatView worked in the Classic to OS X 10.4; it still runs under Basilisk or SheepShaver.
JMP Pro for Academic Research
3-year license for JMP Pro for Academic Research normally $2,995; discounted to $1,995 10/16/2017-12/7/2017
We have not gathered much information, but JMP claims JMP Pro for Academic Research includes software to easily gather, process, and clean data; to analyze and model; and to interactively visualize and share insights. It can pull data from competing software including R and SPSS, and supports mixed models and multi-level modeling; semantic analysis and topics analysis for text data; data mining and neural networks; cross-validation; automatic model comparison; penalized regression; and other capabilities.
Gauss
Current version: 18
64-bit: yes, at least back to Gauss 16
Mojave? No idea.
Listing updated: 10/2018
Gauss is a widely used, “big-time” package...but let’s let Aptech Systems, the developers, say it:
The GAUSS Mathematical and Statistical System is a fast matrix programming language widely used by scientists, engineers, statisticians, biometricians, econometricians, and financial analysts. Designed for computationally intensive tasks, the GAUSS system is ideally suited for the researcher who does not have the time required to develop programs in C or FORTRAN but finds that most statistical or mathematical 'packages' are not flexible or powerful enough to perform complicated analysis or to work on large problems.
Joel West, the creator of this site, wrote: “Gauss was never available on Macs before, and is considered the high-end statistics package for economic research. Here's a good third party resource for Gauss.”
The last time we checked the web site, we were unable to discover pricing or compatibility information, though it had previously shown 10.9 compatibility.
mathStatica
Current Version: 2.7
Requires Mathematica 9, Intel Mac; previous versions PPC compatible
Listing updated: 1-2017
mathStatica is an add-on package for Mathematica which provides algebraic and symbolic solution to statistical problems. Thus, it is supported in the same configurations as Mathematica for the Macintosh. It is published by MathStatica Pty. Ltd. It now provides an arbitrary-precision numeric engine for accuracy, especially in highly iterative processes.
The software is sold as mathStatica Basic (bundled with the associated book, Mathematical Statistics with Mathematica) and as mathStatica Gold ($69 upgrade from mathStatica Basic).
SPSS (IBM)
Current version: 27. Final PowerPC version was 16; final Classic version was 12.
Pricing: by subscription ($99/per month and up), add-on modules are $79 each
Mojave? Yes
64-bit? Yes
Academic cost: Grad and Student Packs start at around $70 for one year. We recommend against getting “hooked.”
Listing updated: November 2020
Also see JASP (free SPSS replacement), PSPP (free SPSS clone), Stata, and JMP.
SPSS was the industry standard statistics package when it wsa purchased by IBM; the price was jacked up, and then switched to a subscription model. Many features require pricey add-ons. The user interface is Java-based and very slow, especially when opening windows.
SPSS Mac easily exchanges data, syntax, and output files with the Windows version, and with most older versions (even those which can’t deal with long variable names). Output file formats changed a few years ago, but can be read in the free PSPP if needed.
There is no shortage of fine statistics software at prices far below those of SPSS. Based on our use of Release 27 for Windows, the changes have been incremental, not revolutionary, since version 11. The software looks prettier but is slower. There have been some welcome changes (better output formatting, more sensible option setting) and some that are less than welcome (slower interface).
SPSS 10.08a can run in Classic mode under OS X on PowerPC machines if you (1) right-click (or control-click) on the SPSS 10 program package (not the alias)and select 'Show Package Contents;' (2) drag out the SPSS 10 for Macintosh alias from the package; (3) close the folder and use the alias you just dragged out of the SPSS package to start the program.
Stat-Ease Design-Expert
Current version: 11.1
Price: $1,325/year (academic discounts available)
Software last updated Nov. 2018, listing created Nov. 8, 2018
Size: 315 MB
With Design-Expert software, “you can not only screen for vital factors, but also locate ideal process settings for top performance and discover optimal product formulations. Easily view response surfaces from all angles with rotatable 3D plots. Set flags and explore contours on interactive 2D graphs; and use the numerical optimization function to find maximum desirability for dozens of responses simultaneously. For a list of features and more, scroll to the bottom of the page.” (We will review this soon; we did a quick run-through to get the feel of it.)
This is not software for those who only vaguely remember some high school or college statistics; it’s for a relatively sophisticated audience. That said, it can make some difficult decisions easier, as the blurb above promises. You can adjust many aspects of the software through the preferences, including just about type of type size, other than the little explanations in the boxes (e.g., in the illustration above, where it says “Design for 2 to 21 factors...”) which is quite small.
Stat Tools Excel For Mac 2017 Download
Once installed, Design-Expert reloads quickly, bringing the user to a choice of using a wizard, which is fairly thorough in its descriptions; creating a new design in a more traditional way; or opening a saved design (using the native Mac dialogue box). The program uses the Mac menus and feels native in every way, including responsiveness; preferences are in the right place.
“Special purpose general software”
Easy Chi-Square Calculator
Current version: 1.1
Price: 99¢ from the Mac App Store
Software last updated August 2018, listing created August 28, 2018 and updated October 17, 2018.
Mark Brown’s 99¢ app on the Mac App Store is designed for one and only one purpose: conducting a chi-square test of independence from a contingency table of any size. You can hover over cells to see the expected value, too. Mark said he’d work on importing from Excel and such for a future version; in the meantime, it’s hard to argue with an easy-to-use program that does one thing (well, two, including viewing expected values) but does it very well. (We have tested it and it looks just about the same on our screen; the typeface is a little more readable now.)
Not seen in the screen shot: when you hover over a cell, it shows the expected value. You can easily add columns or rows by clicking in the plus signs, so it's not just for 2x2s. You can change the number of decimal places for the Chi square or p, and use a Yates correction factor. Data entry is easy — click in the first cell, type in a value, then just press tab to get to the next cell and the next, until you're done (you don't have to click on each cell). This is, in short, a fast, easy, one-trick pony that does what it says it will, and won't break your budget (or at least it won't break your budget by more than 99¢).
Stat Tools Excel For Mac 2017 Torrent
Kaleidagraph
This graphing program computes ANOVAs, including repeated measures ANOVAs. See its listing on the Graphing page. An add-on for Mathematica is available.
Online
StatCrunch
Pricing: $25/year or $15/six months; free to faculty; bulk rates
Listing updated: Jan 2021
StatCrunch has been purchased by Pearson. It is a statistics program on the web. It has the usual range of basic statistics, from t-tests to regression to ANOVA and nonparametric tests, with a wide range of graphs also available, and works from Excel or text files. StatCrunch will also store your data within reason; it seems to work fine with Safari. For those with low budgets or infrequent needs, StatCrunch's price is attractive, and you can use other members’ data.
Stat Tools Excel For Mac 2017 Full
Didn’t find what you wanted? Try graphing / visualization (sometimes with statistics built in) and data mining, econometric software, general math, and specialty statistics
Stat Tools Excel For Mac 2017 Free
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