A Review of the Manuals for BMDP and SPSS

SPSS and BMDP have much in common, but they have contrasting emphases. The SPSS manual is intended for an unsophisticated audience. It has low-level statistical explanations and carefully written directions for running the programs, but not much about computational procedures. In contrast, the BMDP manual is more sophisticated, with not much statistical explanation, brief explanation of the control language, and substantial discussion of algorithms. We summarize our review with a listing of qualities which we consider important in a manual and our ratings for SPSS and BMDP.