Data analysis Use of computers

Computers  Increasing power  Decreasing costs  Miniaturization

Mainframes  IBM, VAX, Univac, decsystems  Access through hardwired terminals or telephone lines  Wireless  Timesharing, interactive or batch  Access to internet

PCs  Stand alone computers  May be networked to a mainframe, or access to a mainframe through a telephone line  Increasingly small and powerful  IBMs and their “clones”, Apples/MacIntoshes

Software  Instructions to the computer  Word processing (WORD), spreadsheets (Excel), databases (Access)  Statistics: SPSS, Statistical Package for the Social Sciences  Data file and program file that defines the data

Data  Coding data—assignment of numbers to values of the variable  Codebook: identifies where each variable is located and the possible values for that variable