PACEXL - ABOUT PACEXL

About PaceXL - Overview

PaceXL is a statistics add-in that works inside Microsoft® Excel.

It is written so that it operates inside Excel, but with its own:

menu
toolbars
dialog windows

Through these, PaceXL adds an extensive range of statistical and graphical options to those already available in Excel.

PaceXL works as if it is part of Excel.

PaceXL makes significant additions to Excel's capabilities for:

statistics
data analysis (a term often used instead of statistics)
graphs and charts

PaceXL's capabilities cover a typical 800 page textbook and include:

a full range of descriptive tables, plots, summary measures
probability calculations and plots for eight distributions
confidence intervals and hypothesis tests for one and two samples
Chi-square tests and ANOVA
regression and correlation, including automated regression methods
time series analysis
index numbers
quality control charts
hundreds of graph and chart options

The full range of options are too numerous to list here. They are summarised in the following documents: Summary of Options: Word Document or Summary of Options: html.

The full capabilities of Excel are retained:

PaceXL uses Excel worksheets for inputting data.
It uses Excel worksheets for storing any calculations, tables and graphs it generates.
Saving or opening a workbook, and previewing or printing output is done using Excel's normal operations.

PaceXL is designed for educational purposes:

a teaching tool
and a learning tool
a powerful data analysis tool
for use in introductory / intermediate courses in statistics
for courses in science, business, etc
suitable for 1st and 2nd year university, MBA programs, TAFE and years 11-12
matches the topics and style of typical textbooks
the Help system topics are 'on top' and include extensive tours and tutorials so students can easily teach themselves
it is easy to learn and user-friendly
specifically designed and written for educational purposes by statistics instructors/users
prepares students for using larger commercial packages should they move to advanced studies
students and instructors spend less time on formulae and calculations
students can focus on, and enjoy, statistics

PaceXL is also useful for the workplace:

students can take the software with them to their jobs
the educational version can be licensed to commercial users
the publishers of PaceXL are working on a commercial version

Data analysis and exploring data are key features of PaceXL:

This is achieved by being able to switch quickly from one statistics routine to another and to quickly bring up and change charts and graphs
There are many speciality graphs such as box plots, dot plots and proper histograms, and combination plots such as histogram + normal; box plot + dot plot; normal distribution + t distribution
All PaceXL graph types and features can be changed quickly and effortlessly using the PaceXL Charts toolbar
Data manipulation routines such as Unstack and Select add power, flexibility and speed to any data analysis, and these are in addition to Excel facilities, such as sorting

Other key features for teaching and learning:

PaceXL has many features which help a statistics course become more alive, interesting, meaningful and rewarding for students.

Highly professional look and feel
Remarkable speed for calculations and generating graphs
Covers practically all statistical topics in a 800 page textbook
Large range of specialty graphs, possibly unmatched by other packages, including numerous combination graphs
Ability to investigate subsets of the data through unstack and select
Enables the instructor to illustrate difficult statistical concepts to students (such as the p-value with a hypothesis test)
Tutorials in computing laboratories are more realistic and exciting for students
Assignments can be based on large, real life data sets
Research applications

Compared to other packages:

PaceXL sets a new standard in terms of add-ins and has significant advantages over other add-ins
PaceXL is a viable instructional alternative to the well-known commercial statistics packages
Price is important, and the relatively small outlay by students on PaceXL is quickly repaid in terms of time and frustration saved.