Academic Consulting

We’re a little unsure as to why you’d want to rename such a well-known brand, but then we’ve been a little puzzled by quite a few of the recent changes in our favourite statistics package. According to the press releases, SPSS are rebranding all of their packages in order to ensure consistency across their product range. Hence, what we now know as SPSS Statistics, will now be known as PASW Statistics, Clementine becomes PASW Modeller, SPSS Decision Trees becomes PASW Decision Trees and so on.

A full list of the name changes can be found here. PASW stands for Predictive Analytics Software, and is not pronounced as a word, each letter is simply spelt out as SPSS was i.e. P - A - S - W. Somewhat confusingly, the software company itself is retaining the name SPSS Inc., so it’s still www.spss.com that you visit to obtain product information.

The functionality of the software is identical to SPSS, as is the interface. To upgrade to PASW you simply install a patch – the effect of this is that all references to the acronym SPSS are replaced with PASW. The patch can be obtained from the SPSS website (you need to be logged into their technical support area to access it) or alternatively it can be obtained via your institution’s IT department. If you’re downloading or installing it yourself, be warned – the download is massive at 797MB and once downloaded the install itself seems to take around an hour.

Academic Consulting’s public courses are now being offered as PASW, as are the courses we run through the Centre for Academic Development at The University of Auckland. Courses at other institutions such as Victoria University of Wellington and University of Canterbury will be upgrading at a later date. Rest assured that if you attend a PASW course but are still using SPSS on your own computers (or vice-versa), you’ll have no issues transferring the skills learnt – the only change is the name itself.

As an aside, PASW 18 will be available in New Zealand sometime in the last quarter of 2009 - we'll keep you posted as more information comes to hand.