Selection of MINITAB commands

MINITAB may be operated either by choosing from menus or by making session commands. What follows is a selection of session commands that cover the material presented in the book. Readers not using MINITAB will probably find the hints using commands more revealing than those using menus. To make the commands understandable we use a convention that the command word and arguments, if any, appear in upper case words and letters. We also insert explanatory words in lower case which are not part of the command and must not be entered into the computer. In fact, MINITAB accepts text in both upper and lower case and does not differentiate. Also, only the first four letters of a command word need be entered. The following symbols are used: C denotes a column which must be typed with a C in front, such as C3, or be named. K denotes a constant which can be a number, such as 1.2, or a stored constant, such as K4, or be named. E denotes either a column or a constant. M denotes a matrix which must be typed with an M in front, such as M11, or be named. ( ) Round brackets are used in some commands. [ ] Square brackets enclose optional parts of commands or optional arguments. # The hash sign precedes comments which explain commands. They are not to be entered into the computer. Many commands may be followed by subcommands. In this case the initial command line is terminated by a semi-colon ‘;’ and the subcommand is put on the next line which is terminated by a stop ‘.’.Additional subcommands may be inserted, followed by a semicolon, but the final subcommand is terminated by a stop. In the table subcommands are either put on the same line as commands, to save space, with appropriate punctuation, or inset on the next line without punctuation. Commas may be introduced into the table to clarify descriptions but are not part of a command. The list is a small selection of the commands available. The commands are given in what is usually their simplest form. In particular, C may often be replaced by C…C. Thus in the list is HISTOGRAM C Not only is HISTOGRAM C1 allowable, but also HISTOGRAM C! C2 C3 which will produce graphs for each of the three columns. The HELP facility in MINITAB is very good. Further information on the commands may be found there.

Data Input and Output NAME E “name”…E “name” PRINT E READ data into columns C…C … END SET data in column C … END Data Manipulation CODE (K…K) to K …(K…K) to K for C, store in C DELETE rows K…K from columns C…C DIFFERENCES of data in C, put into C PARSUMS of C, put into C (sum of first i rows into ith row of storage column) RANK data in C ROUND to the nearest integer (data in E store in E) STACK data from (E…E) in C [; SUBSCRIPTS to be put in C.] TALLY data in C [; STORE categories in C, frequencies in C.] UNSTACK data from C into C…C; SUBSCRIPTS are in C.

Plots and Diagrams BOXPLOT of data in C CHART of data in C # bar chart # DOTPLOT of data in C HISTOGRAM of data in C [ CUTPOINTS at K…K] [ NINTERVAL K] # no. of intervals in graph # For each of the above graphs there are optional subcommands: [ OVERLAYthe graphs] # plots sets of data on a single graph with same scale # [ TITLE is “title”] PLOT y in C versus x in C # scattergram # STEM-AND-LEAF of data in C [ INCREMENT K] TSPLOT of data in C # time series plot #

Simple Statistics CORRELATION coefficients of data in C…C [store in M] DESCRIBE basic statistics of data in C GSUMMARY of data in C # five-no. summary, histogram, boxplot, etc. # RMEAN of data in rows of C…C, store in C Also RCOUNT, RMAX, RMEDIAN, RMIN, RRANGE, RSTDEV, RSUM

Significance Tests & Confidence Intervals Parametric(Means) ONET test on data in C; TEST mean K. # t test on one sample # ONEZ test on data in C; SIGMA K; TEST mean K. # z test on one sample # PAIRED t test on data in C and C TWOSAMPLE t test on data in C and C; POOLED variance. Parametric(proportions) PONE K trials with K successes; TEST value K. # test of a proportion # PTWO K trials with K successes versus K trials with K successes Nonparametric CHISQUARE test of association on table stored in columns C…C MANN-WHITNEY test on two samples C and C STEST of median K on data in C # Sign test # WTEST of median K on data in C # Wilcoxon signed-rank test #

For all the above tests, except CHISQUARE, there is the optional subcommand ALTERNATIVE K # one tail test with K = +1 or –1 # Sampling SAMPLE of K values in C, put into C [; REPLACE for sampling with replacement.] (See also ‘Probability Distributions’)

Regression REGRESS response C on K predictors in C…C [ GFITS] #graph of residuals versus fitted values #

Probability Distributions PDF i.e. probability density function of values in E [store in E] CDF i.e. cumulative distribution function of values in E [store in E] INVCDF i.e. inverse cdf of values in E [store in E] RANDOM generation of K observations in each of C…C BERNOULLI probability of success K (only with RANDOM command) BINOMIAL no. of trials K, probability of success K CHISQUARE degrees of freedom K DISCRETE values in C and probabilities in C EXPONENTIAL mean unity, or [mean K] F numerator degrees of freedom K, denominator degrees of freedom K INTEGER minimum value K, maximum value K NORMAL mean zero, s.d. one, or [mean K, s.d. K] POISSON mean K T degrees of freedom K TRIANGULAR lower endpoint K, mode K, upper endpoint K UNIFORM (continuous) on interval zero to one, or [on interval K to K]

Analysis of Variance ONEWAY anova of data in C using group subscripts in C TWOWAY anova of data in C using subscripts of treatments in C and of blocks in C

Control Charts NPCHART from no. of defectives in C based on sample size K; P has historic value K; SLIMITS at K…K. XBARCHART based on means of subgroups; RSUB C…C; # subgroups in rows across stated columns # MU has historical value K; SIGMA has historical value K; SLIMITS at K…K.

Miscellaneous INFORMATION on columns and constants of current worksheet LET = expression