Winstats for Windows 95/98/ME/2K/XP/Vista (584K) (10 Feb 2008)

Click the above link to download the program.

Winstats provides access to scatter plots, curve fitting, histograms, statistical data, and standard theoretical probability distributions. It also simulates dealing cards, sampling candy, tossing darts, needles and coins. There are two least-squares demos and a confidence-interval demo.

If the program behaves strangely, there is a page of FAQ, which may help. If not, you can e-mail me at the address found in the program’s Help|About dialog box.

Follow the links for more information about the Windows 95/98/ME/2K/XP/Vista version or the Windows 3.1 version.

For those who have had trouble finding a font that enables Greek letters and other special symbols, try the MS LineDraw font.

Foreign-language versions:
French (prepared with the help of David Lemay and Marcel Druwé) (26 Dec 2007 )
Hungarian (prepared with the help of Peter Csiba and Zsuzsa Arki) (12 Apr 06)
Korean (prepared with the help of Chang Soo Lee (10 Feb 08 )

10 Feb 2008: Posted the Korean version today.

26 Dec 2007: Fixed a bug in the Line|Estimation dialog box of 2D scatter-plots.

20 Dec 2007: More improvements to existing simulations.

29 Nov 2007: Added a new Simulation, and a few minor enhancements to existing simulations.

23 Nov 2007: Yet another bug squashed; the Normal|Calc|Intervals|Mean dialog was not correctly extracting the standard deviation from a matrix window, nor was the dialog closing that matrix window when finished, nor was it displaying the matrix data. All fixed, I think.

22 Nov 2007: At a user’s request, multiple time plots are now available.

20 Nov 2007: At a user’s request, you can now connect the tops of histogram bars by a polygon.

26 June 2007: It was pointed out to that the chi-square analysis is difficult to find (it is in the univariate Stats menu), so now there is a new item in the Probability|Chi-Square|Calc menu. This new item opens a univariate matrix window, and displays a small array of plausible data. Another change in univariate windows: when changing the shape of a data array, the user can determine whether the old data will be rearranged in a column-by-column fashion (which has been the default) or in a row-by-row fashion, by changing the check on Edit|Col-by-col.

9 June 2007: I somehow disabled the Line|Constants dialog box in scatter-plot windows, but it is now working again.

14 May 2007: At a user’s request, added two new windows: a dice-average Probability window, and a normal sampling Demo.

1 Apr 2007: Inserted a birthday-coincidence calculator into the Probability|Wait for Repetition window. Fixed the graphical display for a couple of the waiting-time simulations — the text was not the right size for the enclosing boxes and circles.

25 Mar 2007: At a user’s request, you can now thicken the pen used for normal overlays.

22 Feb 2007: 2-dim scatter-plot windows display lists of icons and the corresponding variable names. Someone noticed that turning off the correlation-coefficient display mangled the list of variable names. I think that has now been fixed.

19 Feb 2007: In probability windows, the program was not converting input such as “2/3” into a decimal equivalent. This egregious error has been corrected. In general, dialog boxes should convert such expressions for the user; let me know if you find one that does not.

28 Jan 2007: That same alert user noticed two more things: it was impossible to load the dice in the dice-simulation window; switching to a cumulative display in a probability window was not erasing the normal overlay. Should be ok now.

15 Jan 2007: An alert user noticed that head runs of prescribed length were occasionally being miscounted in the coin-flip simulation window. Namely, runs of the requested length that appeared at the end of the sequence were being ignored. Should be ok now.

8 Jan 2007: A veteran user reported sporadic crashes of Simulation windows. As it happens, these crashes occurred if the many-trial Statistics window was already open when a new sample was requested, if that sample had a small range of data to display. Strange but true. Shouldn’t happen any more.

30 Dec 2006: In 2D scatter plot windows, you can now manage some additional fonts.

17 Nov 2006: A user pointed out that the program was miscalculating correlation coefficients in 2D scatter-plot windows when the row restrictions were applied. I hope that the problem has been fixed. I also discovered how to word-wrap my help texts. This feature will be extended to the foreign-language versions when free time permits. Until then, I await news of unintended consequences.

29 Oct 2006: Multivariable data sets can now be saved as univariate data sets. You can now connect the dots in 1-var time windows.

21 Jul 2006: Added a couple of waiting-time simulations, to complement the existing theoretical probability distributions.

12 Apr 2006: Posted the Hungarian version today.

5 Apr 2006: A user noticed a broken item in the main menu — the Simulation|Wait for Binomial Success was opening the wrong window. It is now correct.

3 Apr 2006: Fixed a bug that afflicted double stemplots. It occurred when the user checked “double” before requesting the first stemplot. That sequence of clicks is now ok, as it should have been.

6 Jan 2006: In the continuing saga of teaching the program to save lots of scatter-plot data with the matrix, it turns out that windows that contain more than one plot might not remember which plot was used to calculate a regression line. That should be be better now, but existing files might lack this information (which is easily fixed). It was also noticed that adding residuals to an array upset the frame position in the scatter-plot window; this too should not happen any more.

28 Dec 2005: In response to users reporting difficulty opening files by double-clicking file icons, new versions have been prepared that deal with file-naming conventions that allow spaces (and extra periods). See the FAQ.

24 Dec 2005: At a user’s request, added a new model (logarithmic) to the 2-dim scatter-plot windows. Also fixed a bug that often caused crashes when closing a session that involved multiple scatter plots. Multivariable matrix files are now saved with new graphic data for their scatter-plot windows.

21 Dec 2005: The data extremes used to label the frame in 2-dim scatter-plot windows can now be hidden.

20 Dec 2005: Minor changes. The newly-created “centroid coords” option in 2-dim scatter plot windows was not doing what it said. I also added a few words of explanation of the Line|Estimation dialog box. Also dealt with bug that crashed the program if you redimensioned a data array after opening a scatter-plot window.

11 Dec 2005: A few minor corrections. For one thing, the Estimation dialog box (in 2-dim scatter plot windows) was crashing when you opened it a second time.

16 Nov 2005: A user suggested that it would be useful to be able to display the centroid in a scatter-plot window. Now you can (in 2-dim windows).

3 Nov 2005: Fixed a small bug that was affecting the color of scatter-plot backgrounds. This color was not responding to requests for change, nor was it being applied when axes were visible and scaled.

27 Oct 2005: The scatter-plot window was not correctly parsing functions that involved the number e. Should be ok now. Also activated a dialog box that allows the user to manipulate the values of literal constants.

6 Oct 2005: Fixed a bug that caused occasional crashes when retrieving scatter-plot windows, and also modified the program so that more of the scatter-plot window data is saved along with the multi-variable matrix file. Hope this doesn’t create any new bugs.

16 Sept 2005: Data sets in which one variable lacked any variation were causing crashes in scatter-plot windows. Shouldn’t happen any more.

28 Jun 2005: Major repairs on the residual dialog box in 2-dim scatter plot windows. Allowing residuals to overwrite existing columns was causing crashes, so this option has been removed.

29 May 2005: Tables for normal and Student t distributions now have a cumulative probability column.

26 May 2005: Quantiles are now available in the normal probability window, and the calculation dialog box now gives correct responses when a non-standard distribution is displayed. Clipboard graphics are now written with extra resolution, so that embedded diagrams will print satisfactorily. Those users who would rather not have the added file size can disable this feature. It is also possible to assign a filename to the graphical display, using the Windows enhanced metafile format.

7 May 2005: For some reason, the chi-square procedure was rejecting zero counts. I think it is better now.

17 Feb 2005: Supplementary text inserted into a scatter plot can now be rotated.

31 Jan 2005: Minor corrections: The text windows (help files, notebooks, tables, etc) were losing their carets (the blinking thing) now and then, and were not opening files correctly.

15 Jan 2005: It seems that the old “search” function that I installed years ago in text windows no longer works under Windows XP, so I had to revise it.

14 Jan 2005: In “interpolated” mode, boxplot division points were not being calculated correctly. I think that they are ok now.

6 Nov 2004: Boxplots were not displaying grouped data correctly. I think that they are ok now.

30 Oct 2004: Fixed a minor display glitch that appeared in boxplot windows that used a grid overlay.

10 Jun 2004: The program was producing occasionally anomalous stemplots. Hope it behaves better now.

12 May 2004: The dice-loading dialog in Simulations was not working. Should be ok now.

1 May 2004: Scatter plots were not printing properly. Should be better now.

29 Apr 2004: In 2D scatter-plot windows, the correlation coefficient r is now displayed in a more sensible location. In matrix windows, default arrays can be zeros or normally distributed values, as well uniformly distributed.

15 Mar 2004: At the request of a user, stabilized the window for the confidence-interval demo.

29 Jan 2004: Yet another bug exterminated. This one crashed histogram windows that were opened with restricted data sets (single columns, for example). Sorry for any inconvenience cause by my errors.

28 Jan 2004: A user pointed out that the program was resisting efforts to set boundaries on frequency intervals. Should be ok now.

31 Dec 2003: At the suggestion of a user, I revised the histogram interface for 1-variable matrix windows.

18 Oct 2003: A user sent me a small file that makes Winstats look like other Windows XP programs. Go to the improvements page.

14 Oct 2003: The bitmap-to-clipboard function was not working in graphics windows. It should be ok now. Also made available two “network” versions described on the improvements page.

12 Sept 2003: Fixed a couple of bugs in the random-sum simulation.

12 Jun 2003: Worked on the 2D scatter-plot inventory dialog, which was misbehaving in a couple of ways.

18 May 2003: Deleting functions in 2D scatter-plot windows was causing crashes. Not any more.

12 Mar 2003: The Grid dialog box somehow got unplugged in the normal and chi-square probability windows. Should be ok now.

30 Jan 2003: The box that pops up for editing matrix elements has been taught to appear where it should (not at the bottom of the window). The univariate descriptive statistics menu has been reorganized to make quantile calculations clearer.

5 Jan 2003: In 1-variable data windows, the rounding rules for quantiles were incorrectly identified, as were the quartile methods (listed under Boxplots). There was also a computational error when rounding quartiles. Should be ok now.

4 Dec 2002: For the current file, the program no longer displays the full path (which is frequently too long) as the window title. Also uploaded a first French version today.

27 Aug 2002: The hypergeometric distribution calculation was freezing for certain parameter values, and the penny and needle simulations were producing puzzling results with certain window shapes. Should be better now. Also made some other minor improvements.

15 Aug 2002: The first reported bug has been fixed — the normal overlay was offset by 0.5 in simulation histograms, and the dice-sum probability function was flawed. Should be ok now.

11 Aug 2002: At long last, finished the new version of Winstats.