Hello, statistics students! Today I am introducing you to the JASP program.
Two questions: (1) What is JASP? and (B) why should you use it? Those are the two
questions I am going to answer first.
JASP is computer software that you can use to do statistics, such as you may
have already done with programs like R with R Studio, Stata, SAS, Minitab, or
SPSS. If you are a student taking an introductory statistics course, or an
instructor looking for an open-source alternative to SPSS, or a business person
who wants to do statistical analysis without buying expensive software, or an
academic researcher wanting to publish in a scientific journal, learning to use
JASP may be well worth the small amount of time and zero amount of money that it
takes to get started. Why should you use JASP. Let me give you four reasons,
starting with this: JASP is free. JASP is open source, so it is free to download
and to use. JASP was designed at the University of Amsterdam in the
Netherlands and JASP is supported by the JASP team, so JASP is, and will always be,
free. Next, JASP is friendly. The three programs
that I use the most are SPSS, R with R Studio, and JASP... and here's why:
I love the simplicity of those drop-down menus in IBM SPSS Statistics. SPSS is
easy to use, so it's easy for me to teach, and it's easy for you to learn. But SPSS
is expensive and it requires a yearly subscription. You spend all that time in
college learning how to use SPSS and you will probably never have a copy of SPSS
to use after you graduate. Now R with R Studio is powerful respected and
free, but R has a steep learning curve. Students end up spending time that they
could use learning statistics, instead learn to become amateur computer
programmers. R is difficult to learn, meaning that it is difficult to teach.
Frustration is high with R. JASP, however, is extremely user friendly. JASP gives
you the power of R with the simplicity of SPSS. Or said another way: JASP is
cheaper than SPSS, and easier to use than R. And another thing that makes JASP so
user-friendly is its "Dynamic Updating". As you select options, JASP immediately
shows you the outcome in the results panel, allowing you to forget about the
software and instead focus on the statistics. JASP is easy to teach,
easy to learn, and hard to mess up, so frustration is low for students and
professors alike. Third, JASPis flexible. JASP is statistically inclusive: it does
both traditional (or frequentist) statistics and Bayesian analyses. It can
open file formats from Excel (after converting to a CSV) or SPSS files,
or directly from the Open Science Framework. JASP's flexibility is cross-platform.
It works with Mac OS X, with Microsoft Windows, and with Linux. And finally,
letter D, JASP is functional. JASP is designed to be simple and intuitive, but
of course that only matters if you can trust the results... and with JASP, you can.
Because JASP uses the powerful R statistical architecture as its engine,
JASP is powerful enough to do all of the analyses that you would need for an
introductory statistics course: descriptive statistics and frequencies,
three kinds of t-tests, one-way and repeated measures ANOVA (and their
Bayesian alternatives), correlation and regression, and nonparametric analyses.
JASP can do advanced statistics like factor analysis, or you can add free
modules to do structural equation modeling, or social network analysis.
Plus, JASP calculates effect sizes like Cohen's d for a t-test...something that
SPSS still does not do. JASP creates APA-formatted figures and
tables that you can copy directly into your paper or dissertation.
You can copy tables in LaTeX format and then use your favorite LaTeX editor to
compile it into a PDF. Now, I'm going to do three things with the set of videos:
Number 1, for statistics students, I will introduce you to the JASP software
and show you how to do all of the tests that you would typically need for an
introductory statistics course. Number 2, for statistics instructors, you are
free to link to these training videos for your classroom or online course, but
if you do, please drop me a line or leave a comment, because I love to hear how my
videos are being used in places all over the world. And, letter C, for anyone
switching from SPSS to JASP, I will make plenty of comparisons between SPSS and
the JASP software. And if I could ask for one more thing in return, please
subscribe to the channel, and leave a comment if you find that the videos are
helpful. I read all of the comments and respond to many of them. At the end of
each video, you will find a link to move on to the next one in the series. As we
begin, I want to assure you that this is an INTRODUCTION to JASP for absolute
beginners. I assume that you have utterly no knowledge of JASP, you have never used
the program before, and this is your first time exploring it. I do assume,
however, that you are familiar with YOUR computer, either a Mac, a PC, or a Linux
system. I will be using Mac for the most part.
And, of course, I assume that you have installed JASP on your computer.
Visit the JASP website. choose your version, and download it...entirely for free, no
strings attached. You may even want to check out the blogs for help with how to
use it. And there are plenty of resources
already on YouTube. Many people asked with the JASP name stands for? And for
the longest time, it was politely understood to be an acronym that did not
stand for anything... and the joke was that it certainly did not stand for "Just
Another Statistics Program"... so please, stop spreading that rumor. But now, the
JASP name has an official meaning: Jeffrey's Amazing Statistics Program!
It is named for Sir Harold Jeffries, the great Bayesian statistician. That's our
story and we're sticking to it. So let's get started!
Meet me in the next video and we will get acquainted with the JASP workspace.