Visualist – GenStat statistics in a visual environment
by
Roger Payne
VSN International, 5 The Waterhouse, Waterhouse Street,Hemel Hempstead, Herts HP1 1ES, UK.
Coauthors: Megan Cherry (VSN International)

Visualist is a new visual statistical system that has been developed from the results of the EU STABLE project (EU ESPRIT4 Project 22832). STABLE was aimed at reimplementing GenStat’s powerful statistical algorithms in a radically different, visual programming environment. The environment provides a convenient intuitive style of “programming”, which can readily be picked up by non-programmers. The required analysis is constructed by making a “map” in which “modules” (or algorithms) are linked together by “pipes” which define the flow of data and results from one part of the analysis to another.

The talk will describe how the data structures and other underlying concepts of STABLE have been implemented and extended within Visualist, and review the available modules. These provide all the standard GenStat analyses, as well as different types of data input and display. The full GenStat system can also be run, as a module that executes a script of GenStat commands. The flexibility and scope of the system will be demonstrated using examples of data manipulation, calculation and statistical analysis.

Date received: October 1, 2002

Copyright © 2002 by the author(s). The author(s) of this document and the organizers of the conference have granted their consent to include this abstract in Atlas Conferences Inc. Document # cajn-48.