ELECTRONIC TABLES FOR STATISTICIANS

THE OVERALL GOAL IS TO PROVIDE A MICROCOMPUTER PACKAGE OF STATISTICAL TABLES AND FUNCTIONS FOR ALL THE WIDELY USED PARAMETRIC AND NONPARAMETRIC DISTRIBUTIONS. A FRIENDLY YET POWERFUL USER INTERFACE, PERMITTING TABLE LOOK-UP, HYPOTHESIS TESTING, INTERVAL ESTIMATION, RANDOM NUMBER GENERATION, DATA TRANSFORMATION, AND TABULAR OR GRAPHICAL DISPLAY, WILL FORM AN INTEGRAL PART OF THE PACKAGE. SUCH A PACKAGE WOULD BE MOST CONVENIENT FOR BIOMEDICAL OR PUBLIC HEALTH SCIENTISTS AND OTHER RESEARCH WORKERS WHO CURRENTLY USE PRINTED TABLES FOR MAKING INFERENCES FROM THEIR DATA. PROVEN AND PUBLISHED ALGORITHMS WILL BE USED FOR GENERATING THE PARAMETRIC DISTRIBUTIONS. SCOPE FOR METHODOLOGICAL INNOVATION EXISTS MAINLY FOR THE NONPARAMETRIC DISTRIBUTIONSAND THE USER INTERFACE. HIGHLY EFFICIENT NETWORK ALGORITHMSWILL BE USED TO GENERATE THE NONPARAMETRIC DISTRIBUTIONS. THIS WILL ENSURE RAPID COMPUTATION AND COMPACT STORAGE OF THESE DISTRIBUTIONS DESPITE THE RELATIVELY LIMITED COMPUTINGRESOURCES AVAILABLE ON THE EARLIER GENERATION MICROCOMPUTERS. BOTH A FORM FILL-IN AND A SPREADSHEET INTERFACE WILL BE PROVIDED. THE PHASE I PROTOTYPE WILL PROVIDE THE NORMAL, STUDENT'S T, BINOMIAL, AND WILCOXON RANK SUM DISTRIBUTIONS. IT WILL BE DELIVERED ON A 360-KBYTE, 5.25-INCH, MS-DOS FLOPPY DISKETTE. PHASE II WILL EXTEND THE PACKAGE TO NUMEROUS OTHER DISTRIBUTIONS AND TO OTHER OPERATING SYSTEMS.