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.