They were developed using the Mac OS, and they're available free to the Mac community. Pinned on a wall in the University of Augsburg's statistics department is a copy of an advert for Apple. Presenting statistics is the business of Professor Antony Unwin and his team. But they present them with a twist - by turning mathematical data into a creative science. Think of statistics, and the word 'creative' does not generally spring to mind.
Intelligent visualisation takes statistics out of the realm of theory and into the real world.
The programs were written on Macs, and are only available for the Mac OS . Winner of the John Chambers Statistical Software Award , Sylvia often takes advantage of the seminars that Apple offers to academic users and developers, and believes the Mac's power gives her the competitive edge. Having developed the program, she used it to write her masters and doctoral theses, as well as a scientific article that won her a prize at the Student Paper Competition of the American Statistical Association in 2000. The program focuses on exploring data, allowing the user to analyse consumer habits at e-commerce sites, for example. During development, the team was keen to avoid producing 'academic' solutions that could only be understood by experts.