MagicStat versus SPSS


SPSS is designed for professionals. MagicStat is designed for students.


Research shows that SPSS is not intuitive to learn (Jatnika, 2015) and takes a great deal of motivation (Brezavšček et al., 2014). MagicStat is easy-to-use, even for students who have never used it before! See the results of our experiment below.


SPSS's interface requires students to navigate multiple menus and dialog boxes to run even simple analyses. All of MagicStat's analytical models reside in a single drop-down menu.


Research also indicates SPSS's output is difficult to manage (Prvan et al., 2002). For example, p values equal to ".000" is a common frustration for instructors. MagicStat's output is clean, simple, and easy to understand. It automatically shows only the relevant analyses, and helps the student with color-coded output (e.g., green for p< .05).


SPSS uses a proprietary .sav format. MagicStat can open any data file (including .sav!) and all graphs and tables can be exported in Excel with a single click.


Students must download SPSS or use a third-party application. MagicStat is available on the web via your favorite browser.


SPSS vs. MagicStat Experiment


A recent experiment showed that statistics students who were already trained in SPSS were nonetheless faster and more accurate using MagicStat!


MagicStat vs SPSS


Furthermore, MagicStat helps students who need it the most. The graphs below show how students with higher GPAs were more accurate using SPSS, but there was no relationship between GPA and MagicStat performance.


MagicStat vs SPSS



MagicStat vs SPSS

References


Brezavšček, A., Šparl, P., & Žnidaršič, A. (2014). Extended Technology Acceptance Model for SPSS Acceptance among Slovenian Students of Social Sciences. Organizacija, 47(2), 116–127. https://doi.org/10.2478/orga-2014-0009

Jatnika, R. (2015). The Effect of SPSS Course to Students Attitudes toward Statistics and Achievement in Statistics. International Journal of Information and Education Technology, 5(11), 818–821. https://doi.org/10.7763/ijiet.2015.v5.618

Prvan, T., Reid, A., & Petocz, P. (2002). Statistical Laboratories Using Minitab, SPSS and Excel: A Practical Comparison. Teaching Statistics, 24(2), 68–75. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9639.00089