Statistical Package for the Social

Sciences (SPSS)

Aquino, Angel B.
Arzadon, Stephanie Rose
Mayuga, Princess Joy
Definition

 The Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) is a

software package used in statistical analysis of data.
 It was developed by SPSS Inc. and acquired by IBM in 2009.
In 2014, the software was officially renamed IBM SPSS
Statistics.
 The software was originally meant for the social sciences, but
has become popular in other fields such as health sciences and
especially in marketing, market research and data mining.
Techopedia explains:
Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS)
The Statistical Package for the Social Sciences is a widely used
program for statistical analysis in social sciences, particularly in education
and research.
However, because of its potential, it is also widely used by market
researchers, health-care researchers, survey organizations, governments
and, most notably, data miners and big data professionals.

Aside from statistical analysis, the software also features data

management, which allows the user to do case selection, create derived data
and perform file reshaping. Another feature is data documentation, which
stores a metadata dictionary along with the datafile.
Statistical methods usable in the software include:

 Descriptive statistics — Frequencies, cross tabulation,

descriptive ratio statistics.

 Bivariate statistics — Analysis of variance (ANOVA),

means, correlation, nonparametric tests.

 Numeral outcome prediction — Linear regression.

 Prediction for identifying groups — Cluster analysis (K-

means, two-step, hierarchical), factor analysis
 In mathematics and statistics, the term arithmetic
mean is preferred over simply "mean" because it
helps to differentiate between other means such as
geometric and harmonic mean. Statistical mean is the
most common term for calculating the mean of a
statistical distribution.
 An arithmetic mean is calculated using the following equation:
 The statistical mean has a wide range of
applicability in various types of experimentation.
This type of calculation eliminates random errors
and helps to derive a more accurate result than a
result derived from a single experiment.

The statistical mean can also be used to interpret
statistical data. Some important properties make
statistical mean very useful for measuring central
tendency. They are follows:
If numbers have average X, then:

Since Xi - X is the distance from a given number to

the average. The numbers to the left of the mean are
balanced by the numbers to the right of the mean. The
residuals sum to zero only if a number is a statistical
mean. A single number X is used as an estimate for
the value of numbers, then the statistical mean
minimizes the sum of the squares (xi - X)2 of the
residuals.
Statistical mean is popular because it includes every item in
the data set and it can easily be used with other statistical
measurements. However, the major disadvantage in using
statistical mean is that it can be affected by extreme values
in the data set and therefore be biased.
The statistical mean is widely used not only in the fields of
mathematics and statistics, but also in economics, sociology
and history. It gives important information about a data set
and provides insight into the experiment and nature of the
data.
The other terms used to measure central tendency (an
average) are median and mode. In a normal distribution the
statistical mean is equal to median and mode.