Sunday 8 April 2012

Non Parametric Statistics for the QL - back to the 1980s

Here at QL Heaven a box of old 3.5inch floppy disks has been reopened. The box has been stored for some time. The first disk out of the box was labelled MDV Cartridges copied 8th April 2001. The single disk contained Superbasic software written in the mid to late 1980s. This included some statistical comparison methods for research. Back then there were absolutely no commercial statistics packages for the QL. And now the situation is exactly unchanged.



In the interests of preservation the software package has been again copied to one of the QXL.win files on QPC. Running the programs with SBASIC threw up some interesting faults. Badly constructed IF statements with additional unnecessary END IFs that threw the END DEFine statements out of kilter. Clashes between some of the program's variable names and SBASIC keywords and horror of horrors even some GOTOs. How the programs ran I don't know. Yet they did, presumably because the QDOS Superbasic interpreter was more generous in allowing constructs that SBASIC does not.


QL Heaven plans to review the programs further to discover if the calculations produced are in fact valid after the tweaks required to stop the SBASIC interpreter complaining. If so perhaps they will be published here as listings.