This is an excellent package which should prove most helpful to teachers of introductory statistics at A level and above. The limitation of the program is that it deals with only single samples of data and hence does not permit statistical tests of differences between samples. It does about everything you could reasonably expect a program to do with a single sample of data, however, with most professionally designed and attractive menus and graphics.

Stats-Easy comes with quite a substantial manual which takes you through use of the program by an example in step by step manner. When the raw data are entered (several hundred petmitted), they must be grouped into categories and saved to disc.

The grouping is for purposes of histogram display, etc, and the raw data are used for calculations of means, standard deviations, etc. A large number of statistics are calculated automatically (coefficients of skewness, variation, etc) and may be dumped to printer. A screen dump for Epson compatible printers is also provided for the excellent graphics displays (this worked without problems on my Shinaw CP-80).

Statistical significance tests for randomness and for goodness of fit to normal or other distributions are built in. A particularly powerful option permits generation of random samples from a variety of distributions (rectangular, normal, binomial, poisson etc). These samples can be saved and then analysed and displayed graphically to show their main characteristics - an excellent teaching aid.

My only complaint is that a lot of disc swapping is required if you are using a single drive and an option for writing data on to side 2 for use with a double-sided single drive is not provided. Overall, however, this package is thoroughly recommended.