The Graphical Interface
by Sharon Kardia

From SPSS
A large statistical and graphical software package, that is one of the best known statistical packages and is commonly used by research and social scientists

Unfortunately, SPSS does not have a sophisticated graphical interface integrated with its powerful statistical routines.

UNIQUE GRAPHICS FEATURES: SPSS has only the standard graphical options that accompany its statistical procedures.

STRENGTHS: SPSS unfortunately does not have a distinguishing graphical component in its software program. It has a wide variety of very good statistical procedures and good modelling diagnostics, which make it possible to create a plethora of x–y plots from these analyses, but the user has to be motivated to create it because it is not automatically available. This is not unusual for the larger packages like SAS, but it does represent a limit of the graphical interface. It does have some good basic x–y plotting, x–y–z plotting and standard multivariate graphics.

WEAKNESSES: SPSS has all the statistical power of SAS, but there is little emphasis on the graphical display of results, except for the analysis of trends.

LIKELY USERS: The examples throughout the manuals tend to indicate that this package is good for social scientists. It is heavily oriented toward analysis and not oriented toward graphics, so it is recommended for someone who only needs or desires standard graphical capabilities.

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