SCHOOL OF POSTGRADUATE STUDIES

DEPARTMENT OF SCIENCE AND VOCATIONAL

EDUCATION
FACULTY OF EDUCATION
UMARU MUSA YAR’ADUA UNIVERSITY, KATSINA

EDU8222: USE OF COMPUTER IN TEACHING AND

RESEARCH

ASSIGNMENT ON:
Itemize and discuss, with specific examples, at least 10 uses of
Statistical Analysis Packages in teaching and research

BY

SALISU MAGAJI MSCED/21/BIOED/0088

HAFSAT ABDULLAHI HASSAN MED/21/PSY/0059
ALMUSTAPHA LAWAL MSCED/21/CHMED/0214

COURSE LECTURER
PROF. ILIYASU YUSUF

DECEMBER, 2022

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Table of Contents
Abstract....................................................................................................3
Introduction.............................................................................................4
Statistical analysis package......................................................................5
Some statistical analysis packages and their uses....................................9
i. Microsoft Excel (MS-Excel............................................................9
ii. MINITAB.......................................................................................9
iii. MATLAB..................................................................................10
iv. Statistical Analysis System (SAS).............................................11
v. STATA.........................................................................................11
vi. Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS):..................12
vii. R:............................................................................................12
viii. Econometric Views (EViews)..................................................13
Uses of Statistical Analysis Packages to Teaching and Research............13
Conclusion..............................................................................................16
Recommendations.................................................................................17
References.............................................................................................20

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 Abstract
This assignment titled “Itemize and discuss, with specific
examples, at least 10 uses of Statistical Analysis Packages in
teaching and research” discussed statistics, some eight statistical
analysis packages and their uses. Ten importances of statistical
analysis packages were also discussed. Based on the reviewed
literatures, this paper recommended among other that; i.
Academic staff should learn to improve their efficiency on the
usage of statistical software packages especially the one that is
suitable for all analysis in their areas of studies.
ii. Researchers should be the research analyst for their research
findings and seize from giving their research data out for another
to analyze.
Keywords: Statistical analysis package, Teaching, Research

Introduction
One of the features of the development of modern world is the
development of the capacity to convert observations in numbers.
The science, which deals with numbers, is statistics. It crunches the
numbers and organizes them in a meaningful way so that
information is generated. This information builds up knowledge
and thus the development goes on. Advances in computing have

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come handy in this as they help in doing this part of job accurately,
timely effectively and convincingly. Computer can help immensely
in the statistical analysis. There exist numerous statistical tools and
the need is to identify their actual usage. Even with the use of a
statistical package many statistical procedures require a lot of prior
knowledge and insight.

The term “Statistics” is used as a “collection of numerical facts or

data”. Statistics is a branch of science that deals with the
collection, organization, and analysis of data and drawing of
inferences from the samples to the whole population. Statistics are
the results of data analysis - its interpretation and presentation. In
other words, some computation has taken place that provides some
understanding of what the data means (Winters, Winters and
Amedee, 2010). It is also used in terms of a “body of methods and
techniques for analyzing numerical data”. Statistical techniques
have many purposes, which include methods and procedures for
summarizing, simplifying, reducing and presenting raw data. It
then makes predictions, tests hypotheses and infers characteristics
of a population from the characteristics of a sample. In other
words, Statistics is generally thought of as serving two functions.
One is to describe sets of data; the other is to help in drawing
inferences. When you are studying only a sample, there is
possibility that your assumption may not be accurate and you can
never be certain that you have drawn the correct inference. For this
reason the inferential use of statistics may be thought of as helping
you to make decisions under conditions of uncertainty. It is
different from guessing, because Statistics also provides you with a

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method of estimating how reliable your conclusions are. With each
statistical statement that you make, you indicate the probability
that findings like yours could have been the result of chance
factors.

Statistical analysis package

This is a software programme that makes the calculation and
presentation of statistics relatively easy. It allows researchers to
avoid routine mathematical mistakes and produce accurate figures
in their research if they input all data correctly. A statistical
package is the software for the collection, organisation,
interpretation, and presentation of numerical information. The need
for a statistical package has arisen because of the complexity of
calculations involved in making inferences from the data. The
advances in computing technologies have made statistics a yet
more powerful field. To use most of the multidimensional
statistical packages no prior knowledge of programming is
required or assumed, but knowledge of basic computer skills and
statistics appears necessary. A great number of tools are available
in these packages to carry out statistical data analysis. Some of the
proprietary Software are: Statistical Package for the Social
Sciences (SPSS), statistics and data (STATA), Matrix and
Laboratory (MATLAB), Microsoft Excel (MS-Excel),
Econometric Views (EViews), MINITAB, Bio-Medical Data
Package (BMDP) etc.
The emergence of statistical software has undoubtedly contributed
enormously to the development in research studies in this 21 st
century. The high premium placed on ICT by human beings,

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researchers and organizations has undoubtedly made it a major
drive of every nation (Eshasrenan, 2006: Akindutire 2013) in
Matthew and Sunday, (2014). Statistical Software is a vital tool for
research analysis, data validation and findings. Over the course of
history, different forms of data analysis methods have been in
existence. Initially, it was paper and pen and later the advent of
which computer has helped invention of punching machines and
later upgraded to simple calculator and complex scientific
calculator. Later statistical software was introduced which has
undoubtedly contributed enormously to the improvement and
easiness of data analysis in education. As quantitative research
grows overtime, the application of statistical software becomes a
more crucial part of data analysis. Researchers are experiencing a
period where manual data analysis using paper and pen is
completely taken over by more efficient digital analysis with
statistical software Kwashabawa, (2021). He added that “Although
scientific measures in data analysis are becoming most popular and
widely accepted and used, many educational researchers face
dilemmas in choosing the appropriate software package to be used.
One of the most difficult and feared aspects of research is what
type of statistical analysis technique and package one shall use.
Use of any statistical analysis technique and software package will
depend on the type of research questions asked, which in turn
depend on the variable of one's study”.
Nevertheless, pundits have revealed that statistical software is a
software program that makes the calculation and presentation of
statistics relatively easy (McDaniel, 2010) in Matthew and Sunday,
(2014). Statistical software allows researchers to avoid routine

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mathematical mistakes and produce accurate figures in their
research if they input all data correctly.
Research has been identified as one of the important duties of
academic staff (NUC, condition of service: FUOYE, 2013) as cited
in Matthew and Sunday, (2014) and the common saying No
publish! You perish. This has led many lecturers to look for
different means of ensuring their work is given excellent analysis
with Statistical Packages. Development of statistical software
allows academic researchers to conduct more quantitative studies
easily (Chris McGann, 2009) as cited in Matthew and Sunday,
(2014). Many researchers, professionals, scientists and business
managers also can clearly present accurately prediction of the
future using statistical software. Many proprietary and freeware
statistical software packages are available that are suitable for
different statistical analysis, depending on the user's needs: Some
of the proprietary Software are SPSS, STATA, EVIEW,
MINITAB, Bio-medical analysis Package (BMDP) etc., and few
among open or free Statistical software are R, EPI-INFO, CS-PRO,
to mention but few.

The emergence of statistical software in the twenty-first century

has helped different researchers in the physical and social science
to improve in the quality of research. Most renowned researchers
in adopting this software in their data analysis have been able to
identify the immense contribution to research findings (Adetola,
2013) in Matthew and Sunday, (2014). Any quantitative research
cannot be done effectively without Statistical Software. Moreover,
it enables pundits faction research data for easy presentation. It

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helps professionals to interact with data thereby paving way for
creativity and innovation. Some are user friendly interface with
drop-down tips for beginners (ATS, Ucla Edu, 2014) in Matthew
and Sunday, (2014). Advances in technology have improved all
our lives (Akindutire, 2013) in Matthew and Sunday, (2014) and
has allowed experts greater freedom to come out with results
within a twinkle of an eye than ever before where it takes time to
finish analysis. This same technology has offer pundits tremendous
opportunity to research and keeps research as more interesting
statistical software on research analysis.
As quantitative research grows, application of statistical software
becomes a more crucial part of data analysis. Researchers are
experiencing a transition from manual analysis with paper to more
efficient digital/electronic analysis with statistical software. It
identifies the prerequisites of producing world-class studies by
using modern SS solutions. SS has contributed immensely in
improving not only in demography studies and social investigation
but also among other professionals’ researches in Nigeria and the
world at large.

Some statistical analysis packages and their uses

i. Microsoft Excel (MS-Excel) is one of the most popular

computer software programme designed to create
spreadsheets and is part of the Microsoft Office
productivity suite. Although Excel is not made for hardcore
statistics but perform most popular statistical analysis
ranging from mean and standard deviation to multiple

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 regressions ANOVA using excel ‘Toolpak’. The excel
Toolpak is an add-in that you must first install before you
can use it. With this tool, you can make simple analysis and
create charts about your current statistical data. Excel also
includes many formulas and other tools to complete
statistical analyses (Peck, Olsen and Devore, 2016). Even
though Excel perform most general statistical analyses, it is
found very weak in regression, logistic regression, survival
test, analysis of variance, factor analysis and multivariate
analysis (Matthew, & Sunday, 2014).
ii. MINITAB is a complete statistical software used by
researchers from different field of study. It was developed
around 1990 and remains one of the most popular statistical
software programmes available. It is also one of the easiest
statistical software programmes to use, and remains a
popular choice. MINITAB is compatible with PC,
Macintosh, Linux and all other major platforms. With drop-
down menus and dialogue boxes describing how and what
to do next, MINITAB persists as an academic choice for
teaching and learning statistics and data analysis. It
performs most general statistical analyses (regression,
logistic regression, survival analysis, analysis of variance,
factor analysis, but has its weaknesses in the general linear
model (GLM) and Multilevel regression) (Matthew &
Sunday, 2014).
iii. MATLAB: This which stands for Matrix and Laboratory
which is a numerical computing environment and fourth-
generation computer programming language. Developed by

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 Math Works. MATLAB allows matrix manipulations,
plotting of functions and data, implementation of
algorithms, creation of user interfaces, and interfacing with
programmes written in other languages, including C, C++,
Java, and Fortran. Although MATLAB is intended
primarily for numerical computing, it allows access to
symbolic computing capabilities. If one is not a
programmer, a programmer can be hired to implement a
specific model. Stanford (2014) identified MATLAB as
the richest statistical systems by far. It contains an
impressive number of libraries, which is growing each day.
Even if a much-desired specific model is not part of the
standard functionality, it can be implemented, because
MATLAB is really programming language with relatively
simple syntaxes. As "languages" it allows expression of
any idea. MATLAB has much better graphics, which you
will not be ashamed to put in a paper or a presentation.
MATLAB performs most general statistical analyses
(regression, logistic regression, survival analysis, analysis
of variance, factor analysis, multivariate analysis). The
greatest strengths of MATLAB are probably in its
ANOVA, mixed model analysis and users creative freedom
in the analysis (Kwashabawa, 2021).
iv. Statistical Analysis System (SAS): It is a package
that many "power users" like because of its power and
programmability. SAS also offers an interactive matrix
programming language and exploratory data analysis with
integration to R which is very beneficial. According to

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 experts, SAS is somehow difficult to learn as compared to
other packages. However, SAS can work with many data
files. It can handle enormous data files up to 32,768
variables and the number of records is generally limited to
the size of a hard disk.SAS performs most general
statistical analyses (regression, logistic regression, survival
analysis, analysis of variance, factor analysis, multivariate
analysis). The greatest strengths of SAS are probably in its
ANOVA, mixed model analysis and multivariate analysis,
while it is probably weakest in ordinal and multinomial
logistic regression.
v. STATA: The name STATA is a syllabic abbreviation of
the words statistics and data. It is a powerful, complete,
integrated statistical package that provides everything you
need for data analysis, data management, and graphics.
STATA is produced by Stata Corp in College Station, TX.
STATA is most commonly used for crosssectional and
panel data, but it is not as suitable for time-series data as
the Eviews. There are several versions of STATA, such as
STATA/IC, STATA/SE, and STATA/MP. The difference
is basically in terms of the number of variables STATA can
handle and the speed at which information is processed. For
example, Stata/SE is a special edition that can handle up to
32,766 variables. (Matthew, & Sunday, 2014).
vi. Statistical Package for the Social Sciences
(SPSS): SPSS was released in its first version in 1968 after
being developed by Norman H. Nie; Dale H. Bent and C.
Hadlai Hull before been acquired by the IBM Corporation

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 as lately in 2009 (Kwashabawa, 2021). It is now officially
referred to as IBM SPSS. IBM SPSS is a statistical package
used by researchers worldwide. It is a user-friendly
package and various statistical tests could be conducted
using it. It is used by all field of endeavors. SPSS
undertakes both comparison and correlational statistical
tests in the context of univariate, bivariate and multivariate
analysis for both the parametric and non-parametric
statistical techniques. SPSS assists the user in describing
data, testing hypotheses and looking for a correlation
between one or more variables. SPSS is very suitable for
most regression analysis and different kinds of ANOVA
(regression, logistic regression, survival analysis, analysis
of variance, factor analysis, multivariate analysis but not
suitable for time series analysis and multilevel regression
analysis (Matthew, & Sunday, 2014).
vii. R: R is a language and environment for statistical
computing and graphics. It is a GNU project which is
similar to the S language and environment which was
developed at Bell Laboratories (formerly AT&T, now
Lucent Technologies) by John Chambers and colleagues
(Kwashabawa, 2021). R performs most general statistical
analyses (regression, logistic regression, survival analysis,
analysis of variance, factor analysis, multivariate analysis).
The greatest strengths of both are probably in its ANOVA,
mixed model analysis and user’s creative freedom in the
analysis (Matthew, & Sunday, 2014).

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viii. Econometric Views (EViews): This is a statistical
package for windows, used mainly for time-series oriented
econometrics analysis. It was developed by Quantitative
Micro Software (QMS) and now a part of IHS. Version 1.0
was released in March 1994 (Kwashabawa, 2021). EViews
can be used for general statistical analysis and econometric
analyses, such as cross-section and panel data analysis and
time series estimation and forecasting. EViews relies
heavily on a proprietary and undocumented file format for
data storage. However, for input and output, it supports
numerous formats, including databank format, Ms- Excel
format, SPSS,SAS and Stata (Matthew, & Sunday, 2014).

The uses of statistical analysis packages in teaching and research

cannot be overemphasized; however, some of the uses are stated
and explained below:

Uses of Statistical Analysis Packages to Teaching

and Research
It has been discovered that some analysis such as post Hoc,
complex analysis in time series, regression and variance analysis
cannot be calculated manually effectively without statistical
software packages (Matthew, & Sunday, 2014). Statistical software
packages have been discovered to help educational researchers in
the following ways:

i. Statistical software packages help to improve research

expertise.

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The emergence of statistical software in the twenty-first century
has helped different researchers in the physical and social science
to improve in the quality of research. Most renowned researchers
in adopting this software in their data analysis have been able to
identify the immense contribution to research findings and hence
improving their knowledge and expertise.

ii. Statistical packages make research work robust

Due to the accuracy nature of statistical analysis packages such as
SPSS, MS Excel etc, the research data that were analyzed using it
healthy, that is, it is error free or the error is minimized.

iii. Statistical packages make research work easy and

efficient
These statistical analysis packages like SPSS are very good in
simplifying research work to the researchers. They make the
research work easy and efficient to be conducted and analyzed.

iv. Statistical test of findings and hypothesis

Statistical analysis packages such as SPSS is used by the
researcher to transform the data so as to find out the whether there
is significant differences between two or more groups or whether a
particular variable has an influence on another variable or not. This
can be done by subjecting data to significant test and hence testing
the hypothesis.

v. Statistical packages minimize human error in data

analysis

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Statistical analysis packages (MS-Excel and SPSS for instance),
have contributed immensely toward minimizing human error in
data analysis by the researcher. It thus, allows the researchers to
avoid routine mathematical mistakes and produce accurate figures
in their research if they input all data correctly.

vi. Statistical packages improve the efficiency of

educational researchers
The uses of statistical analysis packages like SPSS, by the
researchers in their daily researches improve their efficacy of
educational research by equipping them with the knowledge of
new changes in the modern research innovations. It allows
researchers to avoid routine mathematical mistakes and produce
accurate figures in their research if they input all data correctly.

vii. Statistical packages make research work easy, suitable

and enjoyable
The simplicity of analyzing research data by the researcher and the
ability of the statistical analysis packages such as MATLAB to
analyze different set of data makes research work easy, suitable
and enjoyable.

viii. Statistical packages are less expensive and some are free
Another use of statistical analysis packages in teaching and
research is that, they are less expensive and some are even free
(MS-Excel for example). Therefore, can be afforded by the
researchers

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 ix. Statistical analysis packages help researchers to analyze
their data faster
The changes in technology and new innovations in research have
helped the researchers to analyze their research data faster; using
statistical analysis packages such as SPSS compared to the use of
traditional manual method before the advent of modern method.

x. Statistical analysis packages contain different statistical

tools
The myriads natures of this software enable the researchers to
analyze different categories of data as they contain different
statistical tools such as SPSS which contain ANOVA, regression,
t-test etc).

Conclusion
Statistical analysis package is a software program that makes the
calculation and presentation of statistics relatively easy .There is a
range of different software tools available, and each offers
something slightly different to the user – what you choose will
depend on a range of factors, including your research question,
knowledge of statistics, and experience of coding. The question of
which package is suitable for educational researcher depend on:
whether one is art, social science or science education researcher;
and the type of data and methods on use. Since most educational
researches involved a variety of statistical data and methods that
cannot be easily handled by a singular statistical package,
understanding of more than one package by educational researcher

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is necessary. This is because some packages are more effective in
some type of data than others.

Recommendations
Based on the aforementioned uses of statistical analysis packages
and reviewed literatures, this paper recommends as follow:
i. Academic staff should learn to improve their efficiency on
the usage of statistical software packages especially the one
that is suitable for all analysis in their areas of studies.
ii. Researchers should be the research analyst for their
research findings and seize from giving their research data
out for another to analyze.
iii. Choosing statistical software packages to learn should be
based on suitability of the software for all possible analysis
you may wish to be analyzing. It was therefore
recommended that at least two (2) should be chosen so that
learning research analysis would be broaden and robust.
iv. Nigeria institutions should encourage separate curriculum
on the usage and application of statistical packages in
research study just like other compulsory courses where
students are trained with practical application of statistical
packages in analyzing data because research project/study
at the end of a discipline should be based on pure or applied
field work that solve existing problem in our society.

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References
Kwashabawa, B. B. (2021). Empirical Research n Education: Do
Statistical Packages for Data Analysis Matter? European
Journal of Training and Development Studies, 8(1), 27-35.
Matthew, A. S. & Sunday, O. M. (2014). The role of statistical
software in data analysis. International Journal of Applied
Research and Studies, 3(8), 1-15.
Peck, R.; Olsen, C. & Devore, J. (2016). Excel Technology Manual
for Introduction to Statistics and Data Analysis. California:
Cengage Learning.
Winters, R.; Winters, A. & Amedee, R. G. (2010). Statistics: A
brief overview. Ochsner Jounal, (10), 213-216.

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