SOFA Statistics (and SOFA Lite) are both written in Python. SOFA Statistics was originally written in Python2 and ported into Python3. SOFA Lite is being written in Python 3.11 from the ground up and tries to use the best features that modern Python provides. Not all features added to Python recently are good features and sometimes it is hard to know which of multiple alternatives should be used – for example, should we use collections.namedtuple, typing.namedtuple, or dataclasses.dataclass? Which is where the When of Python project comes in – tag line:
Shrinking Python to fit our brains by providing guidance on when to use language features (and when not to)
Alongside SOFA Statistics I have started SOFA Lite https://github.com/grantps/sofalite. This is an almost complete re-write using some of the latest Python 3 language features and a new code architecture. It is called SOFA Lite because I am stripping out some features that were painful to maintain but were of limited value to most users.
One design goal for SOFA Lite is to make it super-easy to run analyses from Python scripts rather than just via the GUI.
Another goal is to significantly reduce the complexity of packaging SOFA Lite for different operating systems. For example, 90% of the pain of packaging SOFA Statistics has related to its image processing libraries, none of which are really needed now that user-friendly screen-shot software is so widely available. I would love to be able to release a version of SOFA (Lite) that works on the latest versions of the Mac OS (alongside Windows and Linux) and this looks like a good way of making that possible.
Version 1.5.4 of SOFA Statistics has been released. It supports a wider range of SQL Server versions and has numerous bug fixes. It:
Supports more versions of MS SQL Server by switching to the pyodbc library (from a deprecated library)
Standardises multiline checkboxes
Copes with different versions of openpyxl without forcing Linux users to pin the version (which may not be in their distro)
Fixes width of main form help text in Windows
Fixes chart display bug in Windows by forcing IE11 emulation (vs IE7)
Fixes spreadsheet export bug – use column letter rather than name
Fixes bug when exporting CSV with label columns
Fixes sorting in Data List reports
Fixes bug where renaming a project left the original intact
Fixes bug preventing decimal point settings being honoured in Summary report tables and Data List reports
In a sense, 1.5.4 is what I actually hoped 1.5.0 would be. It just took a while to identify and remove all the bugs in the 1.5 series resolved so far.
I am reasonably satisfied with the features available in SOFA so my main goals going forwards relate to stability as underlying technologies change below SOFA e.g. GUI platforms, operating systems etc. What I’d really like to do next is release a Mac version for the 1.5 series but that will require some help from the Mac developer community (see previous blog post).
SOFA 1.5.1 has just been released but unfortunately only for Windows, Ubuntu, and other Linux distros. Mac users cannot install the latest version of SOFA and I suspect the package for SOFA 1.4.6 doesn’t work on modern Mac systems. So it is probably time to package SOFA 1.5.1 for contemporary Mac systems. Hence the call for community help.
I have managed to make a Windows package using pyinstaller and hopefully it will be relatively easy for a Mac developer with packaging skills (and already-installed software dependencies) to pick up the spec file and create a functional package for other Mac users. Obviously I would be willing to assist but without community help there won’t be a version of SOFA available for Mac.
Is this something you could help with – possibly in conjunction with a few other volunteers? I would be happy to add credits to the downloads page so people could recognise your input in making SOFA available on Mac. If interested contact me via https://www.sofastatistics.com/contact.php.
SOFA Statistics 1.5.0 was a big change from previous versions in terms of its underlying technologies. Unfortunately that meant a number of bugs made it past release testing. Every bug identified so far has been fixed in 1.5.1 so now is a good time to upgrade.
SOFA Statistics was first released in May 2009. Since that time SOFA has been downloaded nearly 300,000 times – which is about 10,000 times more than I ever expected :-). Since that time many statistics packages have faded away and others have risen. Hopefully, SOFA Statistics has been a good option for many people and the recent replatforming onto Python 3 and wxPython 4 will enable SOFA to continue for many years to come.
Statistics can be mind bending and complex. It can make your brain hurt and your heart despair. But sometimes it is very simple and easy to follow. Four of the statistical tests provided by SOFA Statistics – namely
Mann-Whitney U
Wilcoxon’s Signed Ranks
Spearman’s Rho
Pearson’s Chi Square
– are reasonably easy to understand with worked examples. You could even say they are elegant in their simplicity. Check out the new worked examples feature of SOFA Statistics version 1.5.0.
The worked examples use your actual data so you should be able to follow the logic of the test step-by-step if you are interested in learning how it works. The goal is to demystify the tests and appreciate them better.
Other changes in version 1.5.0 include the following:
You can now choose the number of decimal places to show in report tables and charts.
Can display counts or percentage separately on pie charts.
Better smoothed line displayed for line charts.
Easier to run generated scripts for testing (only need to set use_locally boolean).
Better visual separation of subtables.
Charts can show N.
Improvements to darker themes.
Add ability to define table to automatically open on startup (using open_on_start setting in projs/default.proj).
Ask users if they want to override existing project if adding new project with an already-used name.
Upgraded to newer GUI library (wxPython 4.0).
Added new safeguards and user feedback when problems converting output to images.
Dropped support for xls (xlsx is supported alongside tsv, csv, ods etc)
Dropped support for CUBRID (largely because drivers for newer versions of Python are not available)
There are also numerous important bug fixes:
Important bug fix for filters with OR conditionals.
No longer fails to copy to clipboard when chart names include slashes.
Scatterplots now cope with variable names including percentage symbols.
Fixed bug displayed empty values in Display Data report tables.
Fixed bug with Select All/Deselect All button not working correctly in all cases.
Fixed bug when repairing duplicate names in import.
Only give project override warning when a new file
Add sky.css to styles deployed
SOFA Statistics has received a major overhaul under the hood for version 1.5.0 (for example, the shift to Python 3.6/7 from 2.7). Inevitably there will be some issues but the intention will be to resolve those as quickly as possible. Enjoy!
Version 1.5.0 is nearly ready to release and not before time ;-). The last release was 1.4.6 in January 2016 but the time since then has not been wasted. Here are some of the changes ready to go:
SOFA will be able to display worked examples for the following statistical tests:
Mann-Whitney U
Wilcoxon’s Signed Ranks
Spearman’s Rho
Pearson’s Chi Square
It will be possible to choose the number of decimal places to show in report tables and charts
SOFA will be able to display counts or percentage separately on pie charts
There will be better smoothed line will be displayed for line charts
Better visual separation of subtables
Charts will be able to show N
Improvements to darker themes
Numerous bug fixes
Under the hood, SOFA has had some major changes:
Python 3.6+ (Linux) / 3.7 (Windows)
wxPython GUI toolkit is 4.0 (up from 2.8)
Sadly, the 1.5.0 release will not include a Mac package but later versions might do depending on practical considerations and offers of packaging help from Mac users. A deb package is already generated for Ubuntu / Debian. A Windows package is nearly ready – SOFA works on Windows 10 and all the dependencies have been baked into an executable ready for the final stages of packaging.
It is expected there will be a few minor bugs slipping through given the scale of the changes underneath but the plan is to quickly release 1.5.1 with these mopped up.
Thanks to George Self there is a great new teaching resource available for SOFA users. See https://goo.gl/4lpIaO Here is George’s announcement repeated from the discussion group:
I teach an undergrad research methodology class and wrote a SOFA-based lab manual for that class that some of you may be interested in. You can find the manual and the data sets at https://goo.gl/4lpIaO.
There are also two appendices, the first is a data dictionary for each of the data sets used and the second covers the various report generating features of SOFA.
The lab manual covers all of the functions and features of SOFA, but in the context of a lab where those functions are practiced rather than just described. The manual also includes a lot of information about how the various statistical measures are used (for example, the difference between correlation and causation). No math knowledge beyond simple high school algebra is assumed on the part of the student and each of the labs includes a “deliverable” activity so instructors can use this as part of a class.
I’ve printed this manual under Creative Commons-BY-ShareAlike so please feel free to use this in any way you want. Of course, I’m also happy to receive comments that could help me improve this manual in the future.
–George
Please give the resource a spin and provide George with any feedback that can improve/refine it. Once again, thanks George for making this available to the community 🙂
I was delighted when SOFA passed 30 downloads in 2009 and here we are in 2017 more than 250,000 downloads later – still can’t believe it :-). Even though Sourceforge seems to have become confused about how many downloads there are having “lost” a whole lot in the last couple of months I am pretty confident we really have crossed the quarter-million mark. BTW a major new version of SOFA is in the pipeline and will be released when I fix some Mac installer problems.
