Gathering and Preparing a Data Set

Use the right tools. Data analysis software has come a long way in recent years. If you haven't researched what's available lately, you might be surprised at how much power you can get for relatively low cost. At a bare minimum, you should invest in a tool to help with distribution fitting. SIMUL8 has recently introduced the Stat:Fit plug-in. We think that ExpertFit is another excellent choice. Excel is good for some simple tabulation, but there is a wide array of techniques out there that are invaluable for exploratory data analysis. If you are working on projects involving data sets of any substantial size or complexity, you will appreciate the features of a complete statistical analysis package. There are many choices available on the market. For full-fledged data analyses, we use Statistica, from StatSoft, because it offers an impressive array of features at a very reasonable price. The right choice for you will depend upon your needs, background and budget.

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