Archive for February, 2014

Using SOFA alongside other statistics packages

Saturday, February 15th, 2014

All statistics packages have their strengths and weaknesses so it is not uncommon for people to want to use more than one – even on the same project. SOFA is focused on making it easy to use some core statistical tests and producing attractive, high definition tabular and charting output. SOFA also makes it easy to link to, or import from, a wide range of formats: xls, xlsx, csv, google docs spreadsheets, MS Access, NySQL, MS SQL Server, PostgreSQL, SQLite, and, more recently, CUBRID.

But there is no point overcomplicating SOFA so it can do every statistical test that might be needed for a particular project. SOFA users have been routinely surveyed on what features they would like added and it has not consolidated into a clear list of priorities. People need lots of different things depending on their specific projects.

So a sensible goal for SOFA is to make it easy to import and export data, including metadata such as variable and value labels. This strategy has already resulted in the addition to SOFA (version 1.4.2) of built-in export-to-spreadsheet functionality. And it has already been improved for version 1.4.3 (not released yet at the time of this writing).

The question is, what packages should SOFA target as priorities for interoperability? Feel free to fire me off an email at grant@sofastatistics.com.

Posted in community, general, statistics | Comments Closed

SOFA exports high-resolution results and more

Sunday, February 9th, 2014

SOFA users can now export their output results as high-resolution images, PDFs, and spreadsheets ** without requiring additional plug-ins.

Easy high-quality exporting

It has never been easier to produce high-quality output ready to include in presentations, papers for publication etc.

High resolution output

It will also be possible to export table data. If there is a specialised analysis you can’t do in SOFA it will be much easier to export the data and import it into another stats package for that part of the process.

Export to spreadsheet from data

And the ability to backup your SOFA data and settings is built in.

Backup data and settings

So 1.4.2 is quite a major step forwards for the majority of users. I really hope you like it and spread the word.

** Doesn’t work for Macs currently – very sorry :-(. Any Mac users with Python experience are encouraged to contact the project – there are several ways you might be able to help SOFA resolve this problem. And get a little famous ;-).

Posted in open source | Comments Closed