Data Desk
Encyclopedia
Data Desk is a software program for visual data analysis
Data analysis
Analysis of data is a process of inspecting, cleaning, transforming, and modeling data with the goal of highlighting useful information, suggesting conclusions, and supporting decision making...

, visual data exploration, and statistics
Statistics
Statistics is the study of the collection, organization, analysis, and interpretation of data. It deals with all aspects of this, including the planning of data collection in terms of the design of surveys and experiments....

. It carries out Exploratory Data Analysis
Exploratory data analysis
In statistics, exploratory data analysis is an approach to analysing data sets to summarize their main characteristics in easy-to-understand form, often with visual graphs, without using a statistical model or having formulated a hypothesis...

 (EDA) and standard statistical analyses by means of dynamically linked graphic data displays that update any change simultaneously.

History

Data Desk was developed in 1985 by Dr. Paul F. Velleman
Paul F. Velleman
Paul F. Velleman is a Professor of statistics at Cornell University. Velleman has an international reputation for innovative statistics education.-Biography:Velleman got his Bachelor's Degree at Dartmouth College, and a PhD...

, a statistics professor at Cornell University
Cornell University
Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...

 who had studied exploratory data analysis
Exploratory data analysis
In statistics, exploratory data analysis is an approach to analysing data sets to summarize their main characteristics in easy-to-understand form, often with visual graphs, without using a statistical model or having formulated a hypothesis...

 with John Tukey
John Tukey
John Wilder Tukey ForMemRS was an American statistician.- Biography :Tukey was born in New Bedford, Massachusetts in 1915, and obtained a B.A. in 1936 and M.Sc. in 1937, in chemistry, from Brown University, before moving to Princeton University where he received a Ph.D...

. Data Desk was released in 1986 for the Macintosh
Macintosh
The Macintosh , or Mac, is a series of several lines of personal computers designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc. The first Macintosh was introduced by Apple's then-chairman Steve Jobs on January 24, 1984; it was the first commercially successful personal computer to feature a mouse and a...

. It provided most standard statistical methods accessed through its own desktop interface.

In 1997, Data Desk was released for Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...

, and included a General Linear Model
General linear model
The general linear model is a statistical linear model.It may be written aswhere Y is a matrix with series of multivariate measurements, X is a matrix that might be a design matrix, B is a matrix containing parameters that are usually to be estimated and U is a matrix containing errors or...

 (GLM), multivariate statistics
Multivariate statistics
Multivariate statistics is a form of statistics encompassing the simultaneous observation and analysis of more than one statistical variable. The application of multivariate statistics is multivariate analysis...

, and nonlinear curve fitting. DD/XL is an add-in for Microsoft Excel
Microsoft Excel
Microsoft Excel is a proprietary commercial spreadsheet application written and distributed by Microsoft for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. It features calculation, graphing tools, pivot tables, and a macro programming language called Visual Basic for Applications...

 that adds Data Desk Functionality directly to the Spreadsheet
Spreadsheet
A spreadsheet is a computer application that simulates a paper accounting worksheet. It displays multiple cells usually in a two-dimensional matrix or grid consisting of rows and columns. Each cell contains alphanumeric text, numeric values or formulas...

.

Data Desk's developer, Data Description, pioneered linked graphic displays including a 3-D rotating plot and graphical slider control of parameters. It has also developed proprietary technology for computer-based multimedia instruction and currently provides contract data analysis services.

Reviews

Macworld
Macworld
Macworld is a web site and monthly computer magazine dedicated to Apple Macintosh products. It is published by Mac Publishing, which is headquartered in San Francisco, California...

 reviewed DD/XL on December 1, 2000 with a 4.5 out of 5.

Infoworld
InfoWorld
InfoWorld is an information technology online media and events business operating under the umbrella of InfoWorld Media Group, a division of IDG...

 reviewed Data Desk 6.0 and said "DataDesk Plus is by far the best Windows package for in-depth data exploration". Also, DataDesk Plus is easily the best Windows statistics package for teaching statistics"

Macworld
Macworld
Macworld is a web site and monthly computer magazine dedicated to Apple Macintosh products. It is published by Mac Publishing, which is headquartered in San Francisco, California...

reviewed Data Desk in October 1997, and gave it 9.1 out of 10, and a 5 star rating.

General references

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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