Use of commercial and free software for teaching statistics

Abstract

This study investigates the effectiveness of two statistical software packages, the commercial software, SPSS, and the free software, R Version 3.5.0, in teaching statistics, by comparing grades earned by students in an introductory statistics course. Students taught using R earned slightly higher grades overall than those in the SPSS class, although the difference between the two groups of students was found to be not significantly different. The responses given by students on the end of semester survey for the use of technology indicated that students felt comfortable with both software packages, and the software R was recommended more strongly for future use in a statistics course than the software SPSS. These findings provided some insights on the use of different software packages in statistics education, which might support the use of free software in teaching statistics at college level.