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Instat+
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What is Instat+?

Instat is a general statistical package. It is simple enough to be useful in teaching statistical ideas, yet has the power to assist research in any discipline that requires the analysis of data.

Instat began life around 20 years ago on a BBC microcomputer. It was first used on a training course on 'statistics in agriculture' held in Sri Lanka during 1983. The BBC micro version was marketed commercially from mid-1985, with the DOS version for PCs becoming available in 1987. From 1994 Instat was free-of-charge. Updated DOS versions were released in 1996 and 1997.

Instat has been used widely in the UK and elsewhere by a range of companies, research institutes, schools, colleges, universities and private individuals. At The University of Reading it has been used extensively on training courses run by the SSC (Statistical Services Centre) and the School of Applied Statistics. It has also been used in many countries on statistics courses and on courses related to health, agriculture and climatology.

'Instat+' (i.e. the Windows version of Instat) has been developed mainly because of its continued use for the analysis of climatic data. Funding from the UK Met Office for a new climatic version, supplemented by support from the SSC and the efforts of other friendly collaborators, led to the Windows version, which was first used on training courses in 1999.

Source URL

 

Instat software and its documentation was copied with permission from the website of the Statistical Services Centre of the University of Reading. If you read this from a CD-ROM that is not very recent anymore, go to the SSC website to see if there is a new version of Instat available.

http://www.ssc.rdg.ac.uk/software/instat/instat.html 

 

 

Licensing, costs and terms of use

 

Individuals may use Instat at no cost, provided that it is for non-commercial purposes. Read the full terms and conditions (pdf file 15 Kb).

Instat must be licensed for multiple, government and commercial use. Special deals are available for schools and for organisations in developing countries. The current rates are given on the following website: http://www.ssc.rdg.ac.uk/software/instat/instat.html 

 

Possible roles for Instat

 

Instat could be your first statistics package

Are you currently using a spreadsheet, such as Excel, for all your statistical work? If so, there's no need to stop using Excel, but you may wish to consider adding a statistical package to your software repertoire. You could start by using Instat for free.

  • Instat provides a relatively gentle introduction to using statistics packages 

  • Instat can be a useful "stepping-stone" towards other, commercial, statistics packages.

Are you teaching statistics, or trying to learn statistics yourself?

Instat is designed to support the teaching of statistics. It includes features to help explain many of the key concepts, such as confidence intervals, that users often find confusing. Furthermore, our teaching menu provides a resource pack of ideas, some that use Instat, but many that can be used with any statistical software.

  • Instat can be installed easily

  • Instat has a familiar interface, similar to other statistics packages 

  • Instat enables users to concentrate on the statistical ideas, rather than on mastering the software

  • Instat is well-suited for use as a demonstration tool during lectures.

Instat for the analysis of climatic data

Instat includes many special facilities for the processing of climatic data, supported by a 400 page guide, included with the package as a help file. These facilities have formed the basis of numerous agroclimatology training courses, in the UK, Kenya, Niger, Algeria, Syria, the Philippines and elsewhere.

 

Installing Instat+ version 3.36

 

Use of Instat implies acceptance of the terms and conditions (pdf file, 15KB).

 

Run the installer Instat+ v3.36.msi (46,299 Kb) if you read this from a CD-ROM (click on the link and then click on the "Open" button). 

Otherwise download the file but it can take a long time (46 Mb) !

 

Instat+ tutorials and documentation

 

Following files are included in the setup, but you can also open them separately by clicking on the links below:

Roger Stern, Sandro Leidi, Ian Dale and Colin Grayer. 2005. Instat Tutorial. Statistical Services Centre. The University of Reading, UK. 40 pp.

Instat Tutorial (pdf, 40 pages, 483 Kb)

Roger Stern, Joan Knock, Colin Grayer and Sandro Leidi. 2002. Introduction to Instat+. Statistical Services Centre. The University of Reading, UK. 316 pp.

Instat Introductory Guide (pdf, 316 pages, 4,831 Kb)

Roger Stern, Derk Rijks, Ian Dale and Joan Knock. 2006. Instat Climatic Guide. Statistical Services Centre. The University of Reading, UK. 322 pp. 

Instat Climatic Guide (pdf, 322 pages, 3,601 Kb)

The Instat help file

dialogue.hlp (1,649 Kb)

Installing Instat+ on computers not running the latest operating systems

 

The downloadable Instat installation file has the extension ".msi". If your computer doesn't understand the file when you try to run it, the following may help...

Microsoft introduced a new feature in Win2000 called Microsoft Windows Installer (MSI). This is standard in most versions of Windows 98 (second edition), Windows ME, Windows 2000 and Windows XP, and is available as a free update for Win95/98 and WinNT4. If you are using any recent program such as Office 2000, you probably have MSI already installed on your computer. If it's not installed, you can install or download it from here, or from Microsoft's download pages. There are two versions of the MSI update file. Download and run the one that is appropriate for your system, then retry the Instat installation.

 

For Windows 95/98/ME:

 

run InstMsiA.exe (1,670 Kb) (or download from Microsoft's site)
 

For Windows NT4/2000: 

 

 run InstMsiW.exe (1,781 Kb) (or download from Microsoft's site).

You should run the update only if your computer does not recognise file extensions of ".msi", or if the installation process tells you that a later version is needed.

The Microsoft Data Access Components (MDAC) may also be missing from your computer. These are needed for Instat to run correctly. You can run (or download) release 2.5 SP2 (2.52.6019.2) from below. You can also download later releases from the Microsoft website.

Again, MDAC is only required if it is not already installed on your computer.

 

MDAC release 2.5 SP2 (2.52.6019.2)
 

 

run mdac_typ.exe (7,746 Kb) (or download a later version from Microsoft's site)

 

Further enquiries

 

For questions about Instat, contact SSC by email: instat*lists.rdg.ac.uk

 
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GenStat Discovery Edition