I realize that there are many people who are very fond of spss and
other statistical software suites. However, I am curious how many
people who, like myself, have a living fire of passionate and hellish
hate towards spss.
I have many reasons for my powerful distaste, but I know that it is
very useless for me to endlessly rant on about it. I do have one
issue which I think has value in discussing, and it concerns the
educational virtues of spss.
So, here is my question:
Is spss or other statistics software really any good for helping
students learn statistics?
Does it encourage the replacement of critical thinking with point and
click methodology? Is there so much time spent on learning software
that little is left for doing actual statistics? Is it really used in
industry? Are there any great errors in analysis which are frequently
made by the misuse of statistical software?
