Software Reviews : STATlab Publisher: SLP International,France;SciTech International,Inc.,in the U.S. Year of Publication: 1991 Version Reviewed: Limited edition (not numbered) Materials: Two 3.5" disks and two documentation manuals Price: $695.00 Machine Specificity: IBM-compatible System Requirements: Minimum requirements include 386SX,Win dows 3.1,3.0MB disk space,4.0MB RAM Effectiveness: Fair User Friendliness: Poor Documentation: Fair

The STATlab software provides the user with an interac tive graphic representation of the data and the statistical analysis that is performed. The variety of representations is extensive and is of generally a high quality in allowing the user to visualize the results of the analysis. This might be particularly useful in an educational context. The software is designed to allow for an add-on package, GEOlab . This would have distinct advantages for visualizing the data according to cartographic representations. The STATlab package as a stand alone, however, has some severe limitations in processing large data sets for statistical analysis. There are also some problems that always occur when an interface is translated from one language to another without examining explicit denoted meanings and implicit connotative meanings of words, for example, delete and suppress are not synonymous.