On a statistical Sofware package for non-expert users

Dimitris Karlis (1) , Gilbert Saporta (2) , Antonis Spinakis (3) , Panagiota Anastasiou (3) , Luan Jaupi (2) , Pierre-Louis Gonzalez (2)

1 AUEB - Athens University of Economics and Business
2 CEDRIC - MSDMA - CEDRIC. Méthodes statistiques de data-mining et apprentissage
3 Quantos

In recent days, statistical methods are applied in a vast extent of different disciplines by a lot of people that, very often, have a rather little knowledge of statistics. This fact can lead to misuse of statistical methods, mainly due to the fact that the users are not able to evaluate the appropriateness and the applicability of the selected methodology, although these methods are rather simple. In addition, these users can be terrified by a statistical output with which they are not familiar. The statistical community has recognized this fact and now statistical packages try to offer some guidance to their users. This paper presents the design of a statistical package, oriented to users with medium or little knowledge of statistics. This package enhances some kind of ‘expertise’ in order to prevent the users from statistical maltreatment. We focus on the statistical part of such software and mainly on the idea of providing statistical guidance in several steps of the analysis to the user in an elegant way. These steps include selection of the appropriate method, application of the method in an optimum way and construction of outputs that beyond plain numbers offer an explanation of the results in simple language. The results of a survey about the user requirements of such a software are presented.

Mots clés: attributes; user requirements; statistical practice; semi-expert system

Domaines: Statistiques [stat]

Dimitris Karlis, Gilbert Saporta, Antonis Spinakis, Panagiota Anastasiou, Luan Jaupi, et al.. On a statistical Sofware package for non-expert users. ETK & NTTS 2001, Eurostat, Jun 2001, Hersonissos, Greece. pp.903-905. ⟨hal-02468783⟩