Contents

• General Features
• Mutiple Analysis Support
• Three Alternative User Interfaces:

     Interactive User Interface
     STATISTICA Visual Basic and Controlling STATISTICA from Other Applications
     Options for Complete Web Enablement

Customized Operation

The STATISTICA system can be controlled in several ways. The following sections summarize the features of the three main alternative user interfaces of STATISTICA:
1. Interactive interface
2. STATISTICA Visual Basic based user interface
3. Options for Complete Web Enablement

However, note that:

• Many aspects of these user interfaces do not exclude each other; thus, depending on your specific applications and preferences, you can combine them;


• The customizable menus and toolbars can be used to integrate the alternative user interfaces and, for example, to provide quick access to macro (Visual Basic) programs or commonly used files; and


• Almost all features of these alternative user interfaces can be customized (leading to different appearance and behavior of STATISTICA); it is usually recommended that you customize your system in order to take full advantage of STATISTICA's potential to meet your preferences and optimal requirements of the tasks that you need to accomplish (see illustration of customizing toolbars).

Alternative Access to the Same Facilities; Custom Styles of Work

Even without any customization, the default settings of STATISTICA offer alternative user interface means and solutions to achieve the same results. This "alternative access" principle present in every aspect of its user interface allows STATISTICA to support different styles of work. For example, most of the commonly used tools can be accessed alternatively:

• From traditional menus;


• Via keyboard shortcuts;


• By using the toolbars and the clickable fields on the status bar;


• Via custom toolbars (user-defined toolbars with buttons and special controls, which can include macros and commands); and


• From the shortcut menus associated with specific objects (cells, workbook icons, parts of graphs), which are displayed by right-clicking on the item (shortcut menus).

As mentioned before, you can have several copies of STATISTICA open at the same time. Each of them can run the same or different types of analyses (traditionally called modules), such as Basic Statistics, Multiple Regression, ANOVA, etc. Moreover, in one STATISTICA application, multiple analyses can be open simultaneously. They can be of the same or a different kind (e.g., five Multiple Regressions and two ANOVAs), and each of them can be performed on the same or a different input datafile (multiple input datafiles can be opened simultaneously).

Individual "analyses" - functional units of your work. In order to facilitate taking advantage of this "multitasking" functionality, your work with STATISTICA is organized into functional units called "analyses" that are represented with buttons on the Analysis bar at the bottom of the application window (above the status bar, see the illustration below, where Basic Statistics, Cluster Analysis, and Canonical Analysis are running simultaneously). Normally, at least one analysis button is created, and consecutive buttons are added as you start new analyses. A variety of options is provided to control (and/or permanently configure) this aspect of STATISTICA.

By default, when you select specific output from a results dialog, the output (a table or a graph) is displayed and the dialog is automatically minimized into its respective analysis button on the bottom of the screen. Click that button (or press CTRL+R) to display the dialog again and resume the analysis.

A selection of options pertaining to analysis management is available on the shortcut menu (accessed by right-clicking on an analysis button on the Analysis bar) related to the respective analysis buttons.

A useful hint for users with large screens. Users with large screens can turn off the default minimization of the analysis dialogs and take advantage of the fact that most of these dialogs are small, and thus can be kept permanently on the screen and used as "semi-toolbars" from which consecutive output objects are selected.

When you run multiple analyses and the STATISTICA workspace becomes cluttered, you can hide all windows related to specific analyses (or close them altogether via the analysis button shortcut menu command Close All Analyses); you can also open new STATISTICA applications, which offers another simple way to organize and manage your work.

Overview

Main components of the interactive user interface of STATISTICA. Although the interactive user interface of STATISTICA is not the only one available (see STATISTICA Visual Basic), it is in most cases the easiest and most commonly used.

Many components of this user interface can be seen on the STATISTICA screen.

First, similar to most software programs, menu bars and various toolbars are displayed at the top of the screen. These are customizable and displayed in the most appropriate manner for your tasks.

At the bottom of the screen, the Analysis bar (containing minimized analysis/graph dialogs) and the status bar are displayed. Additionally, shortcut menus are available when you right-click in appropriate places.

Datafiles can be displayed in spreadsheets, workbooks, reports, or individual windows. Results spreadsheets or graphs can be displayed in workbooks, reports, or individual windows. Note that additional documents (such as Microsoft Word, Excel, or graphics files) can also be displayed in spreadsheets, workbooks, or reports. Finally, STATISTICA Visual Basic code is displayed in macro windows.

Normally you would not simultaneously see all of these facilities and tools at one time. You always have the ability to make the user interface of STATISTICA as simple or complex as your particular needs and comfort level demand.

Modules. While STATISTICA offers a variety of statistical and graphical procedures, each procedure can be performed in the same application of STATISTICA. This means that, for example, it is possible to calculate residual statistics using options in the Multiple Regression module, then immediately use that output in the Factor Analysis or another exploratory module without first starting another application of STATISTICA.

The Flow of Interactive Analysis

Startup Panel. When a particular statistical procedure is selected from the Statistics menu, a respective Startup Panel is displayed. Each Startup Panel contains a list of the types of analyses available in that particular module. Clicking anywhere outside the panel automatically minimizes it as a button on the Analysis bar. Users of systems with high-resolution screens can change this default and keep the consecutive dialogs (in each analysis sequence) on the screen. This way they can be used as convenient "toolbars" from which options (e.g., output) can be requested.

Toolbars. If you prefer to use buttons rather than menus to select statistical analyses, you can activate the Statistics toolbar (which has buttons for every module) by right-clicking on any toolbar and selecting Statistics from the shortcut menu that lists available toolbars. Alternatively, you can select Statistics from the View - Toolbars menu. You can also create your own toolbar that holds the toolbar buttons for analyses you use most frequently.

"Analysis definition" and "output selection" dialogs. When the desired analysis and (when requested) a new datafile are selected on the Startup Panel, the analysis definition dialog is displayed, in which you select the variables to be analyzed and other options and features of the task to be performed. Often, these dialogs have several tabs that group the options, analyses, and/or results in logical categories to make it easier to locate specific features.

In some simple analyses (such as descriptive statistics, as shown on the sample screen above), the analysis definition dialog also serves as an output selection dialog where you can request the type and format of the output (e.g., some specific spreadsheets or graphs).

Output. As described in more detail in Three Channels for Output from Analyses, the consecutive output spreadsheets and graphs are displayed by default in workbooks. These workbooks can be saved and later reopened, making it easy to return to specific results as needed.

Additionally, you can send all output to an analysis report, which produces an easily organized (via the report tree), easily formatted, and easily printed report of a specific analysis. You can also choose to send all results, regardless of what analysis it comes from, to a single report. Alternatively, the output can be directed to separate windows.

Features of Analysis

STATISTICA provides direct access to all statistical and graphical analyses dialogs via

the Statistics menu

and Graphs menu (as well as from the Statistics toolbar and the Graphs toolbar).

Minimizing dialogs (and a hint for large screen users). Depending on your preferences, you can choose to minimize all analysis dialogs when you select another window in STATISTICA or another application. By default the Auto Minimize command is checked; however, when your screen is large enough to accommodate several windows, it is recommended that you clear this option. This keeps the analysis dialogs on screen while the respective output created from these dialogs is produced, thus allowing you to use the dialogs as "toolbars" from which output can be selected.

Continuing analyses/graphs. It is easy to continue the current analysis or graph (i.e., to change the focus to the current dialog for a particular analysis). Select Resume Analysis/Graph from the Tools - Analysis Bar menu, press CTRL+R, or click the analysis/graph button on the Analysis bar. When multiple analyses are running, you can also select the specific analysis from the Tools - Analysis Bar - Select Analysis/Graph menu (as shown here).

Hiding windows. To further facilitate the organization of windows from various analyses, you can hide all windows associated with a particular analysis when that analysis is deselected.

Document Types

• Workbooks
• Spreadsheets (multimedia tables)
• Reports
• Graphs
• Macros (STATISTICA Visual Basic)

You can quickly access most recently used documents. Click the STATISTICA Start button (in the lower-left corner of the screen) and select Documents.

Toolbars related to types of active document windows. Each of the main types of STATISTICA document windows (see above) manages data in a different way, and thus offers different customization and management options. These differences are reflected in the toolbars that accompany each type of window.

User-defined toolbars. In addition to the variety of toolbars provided in STATISTICA, you can also create user-defined toolbars. These toolbars can include any command available in STATISTICA, as well as special controls (i.e., font name, font size, graph styles, etc.). The toolbars can be given any name and can be designated to open depending on the active document type.

Also, you can customize all toolbars (including existing toolbars) by adding commands and special controls.

To create a toolbar (or edit an existing one) use the Toolbars tab of the Customize dialog accessible from the Tools - Customize menu. Customizing a toolbar is as easy as dragging commands from the dialog to the toolbars, as shown in the illustration below.

Shapes and locations of toolbars can be easily adjusted (e.g., all toolbars can be docked or free floating). All of these options make it possible for you to create unique toolbars that provide you with a very specialized user interface. The Electronic Manual includes simple to follow, step-by-step instructions on how to make those customizations.

User-defined menus. Customizing the menus is equally easy and can be performed using the Menu tab of the Customize dialog shown here.

The industry standard STATISTICA Visual Basic language (integrated into STATISTICA) provides another (alternative) user interface to the entire functionality of STATISTICA, and it offers incomparably more than just a "supplementary application programming language" that can be used to write custom extensions. STATISTICA Visual Basic takes full advantage of the object model architecture of STATISTICA and can be used to access programmatically every aspect and virtually every detail of the functionality of STATISTICA. Even the most complex analyses and graphs can be recorded into Visual Basic macros and later be run repeatedly or edited and used as building blocks of other applications. STATISTICA Visual Basic adds an arsenal of more than 10,000 new functions to the standard comprehensive syntax of Microsoft Visual Basic, thus comprising one of the largest and richest development environments available. For more information see STATISTICA Visual Basic.

Controlling STATISTICA from other applications. One of the features that make the STATISTICA Visual Basic environment so powerful is the ability to integrate and manipulate various applications and their environments into a single program. For example, you can record or write a STATISTICA Visual Basic program that computes predictions via the STATISTICA Time Series module and execute that program from within an Excel spreadsheet or a Microsoft Word document. The exchange of information between different applications is accomplished by exposing those applications to the Visual Basic programs as Objects. So, for example, you can run statistical analyses in the STATISTICA Basic Statistics module from a Visual Basic program in Excel by declaring inside the program an object of type STATISTICA Application.

Once an object has been created, the Visual Basic program then has access to the properties and methods contained in that object. Properties can be mostly thought of as variables, methods can be mostly thought of as subroutines or functions that perform certain operations or computations inside the respective application object. The STATISTICA object model architecture is completely COM based which means you are not limited to using STATISTICA Visual Basic to control the application programmatically.

You can use any programming environment that allows you to interact with COM objects, such as C++, Java, and .NET based languages such as C# and VB.NET. When the STATISTICA object library is imported into a .NET based language, a wrapper class called the COM Interop is created. The COM Interop layer causes the STATISTICA object library to behave like any other .NET object.

The WebSTATISTICA Server system is offered as a complete solution that includes the analytic functionality of the respective selected STATISTICA product or any combination of products, starting with STATISTICA Base and up to all enterprise systems: SEWSS, SEDAS, and Data Miner. WebSTATISTICA Server is the ultimate enterprise system that offers the full Web enablement, including the ability to run STATISTICA interactively or in batch from a Web browser on any computer (incl. Linux, UNIX), offload time consuming tasks to the servers (using distributed processing), use multi-tier Client-Server architecture, manage projects over the Web, and collaborate "across the hall or across continents."

WebSTATISTICA Server enables users to:
Work collaboratively "across the hall" or "across continents"
Run STATISTICA using any computer in the world (connected to the Internet)
Offload time consuming tasks to the servers
Manage/administer projects over the Web
Develop highly customized Web applications, and much, much more…

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