You’ll have to invest some time, and if you stick with it, you’re likely to be learning its intricacies for years to come. It certainly does have a steep learning curve. After all, this is a tool designed by IBM to be used by engineers and scientists. It’s not fair to criticize SPSS for being overly complex.

Sophisticated Excel spreadsheets can draw from the same data stores used by SPSS or even its higher functions. The program also has full support for Microsoft Office, and the integration here is quite powerful. These formats include DBF, DOC, PDF, TXT, XLXS and at least a dozen more. SPSS supports a wide range of document formats, and it can input from and output to each supported format. It can help you identify trends, and it can create automation models to generate simulated scenarios from which you can forecast. The included IBM SPSS Modeler supports data mining, text analytics and many other modeling tools. This program eases the process of setting up complex calculations and tests, and it has a built-in syntax editor that you can use when just a single line of code won’t do. You can use complex calculations, mathematical tests or even procedures that you’ve coded. You’re also not limited to binding these visual representations to basic values. You can create graphs and charts and integrate data into illustrations, and these visual models can update in real-time as the underlying data changes. SPSS offers a broad range of options for visually representing data. A 32-bit version is still currently maintained as well, and you should opt for that version for 32-bit systems. Note that this version is intended for 64-bit operating systems only. The SPSS in the name stands for Statistical Package for the Social Sciences, and while the main UI may look a lot like Excel, that similarity is only surface deep. This is a premier tool intended for professional environments that rely on statistical modeling. You can also use it to organize, store and even assist with collating that data. IBM SPSS Statistics is an application suite intended for the processing and analysis of data. SPSS is a premier statistics tool that is developed by IBM and used by statisticians, researchers and numerous other professionals to organize and analyze data.

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