MTB vs EXEL: Frequently asked questions

Question 1.        Is Minitab used at any other universities/colleges?

Yes.  According to information at the Minitab web site, it is used at about 4,000 colleges and universities.  In addition, Minitab information and output is integrated into 338 textbooks, including 132 textbooks in the area of "general statistics."
 
Question 2.        Do you know of any companies/professions outside of Penn State that use Minitab?

Yes.  According to information at the Minitab web site, the number of companies is "thousands."  Three "giant" corporations that do are General Electric, 3M, and Ford Motor Company.  With regard to Questions 2 and 4, you may be interested in these two pages at the Minitab web site:

http://www.minitab.com/products/index.htm

http://www.minitab.com/resources/ctl/index.asp


Question 3.        In comparison to Microsoft Excel, what advantages does the Minitab program offer?

Minitab is designed by professional statisticians, and has advantages  with regard to the number of available statistical methods, the usefulness of the output, the correctness of the statistical approach to any problem, and its computational accuracy is more reliable. In addition, it is much easier to use Minitab for most statistical analyses than it is to use Excel.    

Question 4.        Is Microsoft Excel considered inferior to Minitab?

When it comes to statistical data analysis, Excel is unquestionably inferior to Minitab. To do many commonly encountered statistical analyses, a user either has to install "add-ins" to Excel or has to use Excel essentially as a calculator to carry out "by hand" calculations. Also, there are a disturbing number of statistical mistakes in Excel.  This is particularly evident in Excel's help files that describe statistical methods.

 I took the next paragraph from the web site of a British statistician who makes these points as well (source:  http://www.bath.ac.uk/~ccsphc/excel.html) :   

"Apart from a few simple Analysis of variance models, also provided by the Analysis Toolpak the above just about covers the full  extent of Excel's statistical facilities. If you want to deal with more complex Analysis of variance models, non-parametric tests, multivariate techniques or chi-squared analysis of contingency tables you will have to use Minitab or Genstat anyway. The number of mistakes in the help files associated with Excel's statistical functions and macros and the often bizarre facilities provided in Excel make me wary of using Excel at all for statistics. In short I would strongly urge students to use Minitab instead."   - due to Paul Christie.

Question 5.         Since many businesses use Microsoft Excel, would it not be more practical to use it in classes instead of Minitab?

A business that's serious about statistical analysis often won't use Excel for that purpose.  Excel might be used to prepare graphs or calculate simple descriptive statistics like averages, but it is not generally helpful for more complicated statistical analyses.  A company that does a lot of statistical data analysis will often use one or more of Minitab, Statistical Analysis System (SAS), or the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS).  

Some schools (particularly business schools) do use Excel in the classroom because they recognize the pervasiveness of Excel within the business community.  I'm not aware, though, of any schools that use Excel because they think it is statistically superior to Minitab.  

Question 6.         Why is Minitab used at Penn State?
See answers to questions 2 to 5.

The role of Excel in statistical education is an often discussed topic within the statistical community. The prevailing opinion seems to be that Excel is useful for some simple tasks, but that generally it's better to use a program designed specifically for statistical analysis.  Within many statistics departments, the questions about statistical software may be: To what extent do we use Excel in support of other statistical analysis software?  Which of Minitab, SAS, SPSS (or a few other specialty programs) should we use in our courses?