There are some professional statistical tools are suite for statisticians / researchers which you can freely choose.
- R (Open source)
- S-plus (Splus Packages http://csan.insightful.com)
- Revolution (Commercial R)
- SAS
- SPSS
- Mathematica
- Mathlab
- Minitab
- Stata(中译:数据管理统计绘图软件)
- Python (Open source)
- Oracle CrystalBall (Excel add-on)
- ModelRisk (Excel add-on)
Here is the comparison of Excel Add-on statistical tools ModelRisk and CrystalBall.
Since Excel-VBA has its advantages which can create an automatic system by Macro. I used to using Excel spreadsheet and also tried the ModelRisk trail version during year 2008 but its expensive. During that time I occasionally know about a statistical tools which is an free open source — R and 统计之都 和 人大经济论坛 (changed to 经管之家) and these forums accompany me more than 7 years and know some experts like YanPing, YiHui, SiZhe, LinLin, LiJian, etc.
Recently Microsoft acquired Revolution Analytics and SupStat Analytics is the partner company which running business in China Mainland. R-Foundation, Microsoft, RStudio, TIBCO Analytics, hp, Oracle, MangoSolutions, Alteryx, Google and KetChum Trading join a group of businesses groups call R Consortium. The R Consortium, Inc. is a group of businesses organized under an open source governance and foundation model to provide support to the R community, the R Foundation and groups and individuals, using, maintaining and distributing R software.
There is a brilliant and good news for those who using R. Hope that R professional statistical software can be growth and widely use by people for data analysis.
Now I am using below tools for my research.
I was think of learning C++ but there are quite a lot of things need to learn from RStudio, Shiny, RMarkdown, Server etc.
All statistical knowledge I learn and revise myself since I studied statistical courses more than 10 years in Tunku Abdul Rahman College and almost forgot. I self-study and registered the online courses on Coursera. There are two online data science R and Python courses provides by Johns Hopkins University are quite useful here I recommend Data Science and Genomic Data Science.
Here are some Master Degree Data Science courses. There is a Chinese proverbs call “活到老,学到老”.
Source : A List of Statistical Softwares suite for Statisticians and R