Why not use Dataplot?

[SlideRule]

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has an on-line guide to process statistics, called Engineering Statistics Handbook. The guide makes use of a public domain software called Dataplot. I'm thinking of using that guide for a statistics study, and perhaps installing Dataplot to better follow the case study examples. However, checking around on the web I don't seem to find many people using Dataplot. Is that software worth the bother to install and learn? I ask that anyone here who has used Dataplot please share their opinions about it. Thank you.

 

[Dason]

Looking at the homepage: http://www.itl.nist.gov/div898/software/dataplot/ it looks like the last update was 2006 so the project seems dead? R is a great program that can do everything the DATAPLOT summary says it can do (and R can do much much more). R is being actively developed and is the most used open source statistics software.

With that said I've never used DATAPLOT so I don't know if there are some advantages to it over R.

 

[aduf]

Dataplot's experimental design functionality is really good. R does support DOE via several libraries, but Dataplot is truly a one-stop deal. Think JMP-like functionality at the command-line (and scriptable). It's not a fancy interface, true, but I sure do hope they keep maintaining it.