StatPlusLE for the Mac (Excel 2008 and 2011)
MS Office 2008 for the Mac (and apparently 2011 as well) does not
support the "VisualBasic" scripting language. So all those wonderful
data analysis tools are gone with the Microsoft Wind. To fill this
gap, MS has endorsed a software package StatPlus that replaces these
functions--indeed improves upon them. But it forces you to switch back
and forth between Excel and StatPlus. It's actually not much worse
than Excel with the toolpak because you have to switch back and
forth between different windows anyway.
The software called StatPlusLE is from the AnalystSoft company.
Its menus are filled with advertising for their PRO version,
but all the capability we need is on the LE (light edition)
which is free. The PRO version includes a lot of functionality
that isn't in the MS toolpak and might be helpful doing bigger
statistics projects. I suggest getting the LE version for this class.
You can download it here
After you install it, add the icon to the Dock so that switching
back and forth between Excel and StatPlus is easier.
The announcement of this workaround for Office 2008 appeared in
a number of articles including
this one
How does it work
StatPlus talks to Excel in the background(using AppleScript).
Both programs have to be running at the same time.
Whenever StatPlus needs you to choose a range of cells in the
spreadsheet, it automatically shifts you to Excel. You select
the region in the spreadsheet and then use the Dock to switch back
to StatPlus manually. The region you selected in the spreadsheet
then appears in the blank on the StatPlus form. When all the
regions in the StatPlus form are filled out, you click the OK
button and StatPlus makes Excel generate the
output and then switches automatically.
If you like to know what your computer is doing and dislike switching
between windows while working, you can create many of the Data Analysis
features like Histogram using standard spreadsheet functions.
The toolpak only saves you from typing these formulas. Instructions
are here