![]() ![]() The company sought to keep its software easy to use for those who were not computer savvy, and even paid fellow academicians to make upgrades. While a competitor called SAS Institute was making strides during the late 1970s by partnering with the likes of IBM, SPSS remained focused on its base of academic users. He noted: "It was fun to do, and it was neat when people knew your name at computer conferences. "Initially, this was an ego trip," Hull explained in a September 2003 article in the Chicago Tribune. Dale Bent, who had played a role in the design of SPSS at Stanford, opted to accept an academic position at the University of Alberta in his native Canada instead of becoming involved with the new Chicago-based enterprise.įor several years, SPSS remained a part-time endeavor for Nie and Hull. Mainly for that reason, Nie and Hull incorporated their operation in 1975, and SPSS officially became an independent company. This determination in turn called into question the University of Chicago's status as a tax-exempt organization. SPSS became so successful that the IRS took notice in 1971, indicating that it considered SPSS a small software company. In Nie's words, 'It was like Gillette selling razors at cost and getting its profits from the blades'." Nie, Bent, and Hull received a royalty from sales of the manual but nothing from distribution of the program. Once the manual was available in college bookstores, demand for the program took off. McGraw-Hill published the first SPSS user's manual in 1970. The data analysis application became increasingly popular and by 1974 was earning revenues of $200,000 per year-without any marketing or promotional effort at all.Īs the company Web site later explained: "The early success of SPSS was directly related to the quality and availability of the documentation that accompanied the software. As they concentrated on their academic careers, SPSS grew by itself. With help from a university librarian and the University of Chicago's support, Nie and Hull began selling SPSS to academicians at other universities. Through the years, Nie would receive national awards for his books, and by the early 2000s he had become professor emeritus in the University of Chicago's political science department, as well as a research professor in political science at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business. ![]() His specialty was working with voting patterns, and he went on to author a well-known book on American politics called The Changing American Voter. Nie became a top authority on social science data and statistical analysis. ![]() Nie joined its National Opinion Research Center and eventually was named chairman of the political science department. Hull became head of the university's Computation Center. However, their main focus was on academics and research-not on developing or selling software. Nie and Hull left Stanford to pursue careers at the University of Chicago, and they brought their SPSS program along with them. Hadlai "Tex" Hull, who had recently received his MBA from Stanford, was tapped to write the code, and by 1968 the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) was born. Bent, a fellow doctoral candidate whose background was in operations research, to design a file structure. With that in mind, Nie took detailed notes about what he needed in a software application and enlisted the help of Dale H. The application Nie was trying to use was created for biologists, not social scientists. candidate at Stanford University, decided to develop his own solution after becoming "frustrated trying to use a computer to analyze data describing the political culture of five nations," according to the September 22, 2003, issue of the Chicago Tribune. The history of SPSS can be traced back to 1967, when Norman H. These clients use the company's applications to detect and hinder fraud, increase revenue, reduce costs, and operate more efficiently. From more than 40 offices throughout the world, SPSS serves more than 250,000 customers in a wide range of fields including academia, banking, consumer packaged goods, finance, government, healthcare, insurance, retail, telecommunications, and market research. Its products include CustomerCentric Data Analysis, Clementine Advance Analysis, Quantime, In2itive, Surve圜raft, and student versions of the company's SPSS Base and SYSTAT products. is a leading global manufacturer of software used in data analysis, reporting, and modeling. ![]()
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