IBM SPSS Statistics vs. Wolfram Mathematica

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
IBM SPSS Statistics
Score 7.8 out of 10
N/A
SPSS Statistics is a software package used for statistical analysis. It is now officially named "IBM SPSS Statistics". Companion products in the same family are used for survey authoring and deployment (IBM SPSS Data Collection), data mining (IBM SPSS Modeler), text analytics, and collaboration and deployment (batch and automated scoring services).
$99
per month per user
Mathematica
Score 8.2 out of 10
N/A
Wolfram's flagship product Mathematica is a modern technical computing application featuring a flexible symbolic coding language and a wide array of graphing and data visualization capabilities.
$1,520
per year
Pricing
IBM SPSS StatisticsWolfram Mathematica
Editions & Modules
Base
USD 3,830
one-time fee per user
Standard
USD 8,440
one-time fee per user
Professional
USD 16,900
one-time fee per user
Premium
USD 25,200
one-time fee per user
Monthly subscription
USD 99
per month per user
Annual subscription
USD 1,188.00
per year per user
Standard Cloud
$1,520
per year
Standard Desktop
$3,040
one-time fee
Standard Desktop & Cloud
$3,344
one-time fee
Mathematica Enterprise Edition
$8,150.00
one-time fee
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
IBM SPSS StatisticsMathematica
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsDiscounts available for students and educational institutions. The Network Edition reduce per-user license costs through shared deployment across any number of machines on a local-area network.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
IBM SPSS StatisticsWolfram Mathematica
Features
IBM SPSS StatisticsWolfram Mathematica
BI Standard Reporting
Comparison of BI Standard Reporting features of Product A and Product B
IBM SPSS Statistics
-
Ratings
Wolfram Mathematica
9.9
Ratings
16% above category average
Pixel Perfect reports00 Ratings9.80 Ratings
Customizable dashboards00 Ratings9.90 Ratings
Report Formatting Templates00 Ratings9.90 Ratings
Ad-hoc Reporting
Comparison of Ad-hoc Reporting features of Product A and Product B
IBM SPSS Statistics
-
Ratings
Wolfram Mathematica
9.9
Ratings
22% above category average
Drill-down analysis00 Ratings9.90 Ratings
Formatting capabilities00 Ratings9.90 Ratings
Integration with R or other statistical packages00 Ratings9.90 Ratings
Report sharing and collaboration00 Ratings9.90 Ratings
Report Output and Scheduling
Comparison of Report Output and Scheduling features of Product A and Product B
IBM SPSS Statistics
-
Ratings
Wolfram Mathematica
9.3
Ratings
10% above category average
Publish to Web00 Ratings9.90 Ratings
Publish to PDF00 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Report Versioning00 Ratings9.90 Ratings
Report Delivery Scheduling00 Ratings8.90 Ratings
Delivery to Remote Servers00 Ratings8.90 Ratings
Data Discovery and Visualization
Comparison of Data Discovery and Visualization features of Product A and Product B
IBM SPSS Statistics
-
Ratings
Wolfram Mathematica
9.9
Ratings
20% above category average
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)00 Ratings9.90 Ratings
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization00 Ratings9.90 Ratings
Predictive Analytics00 Ratings9.90 Ratings
Best Alternatives
IBM SPSS StatisticsWolfram Mathematica
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User Ratings
IBM SPSS StatisticsWolfram Mathematica
Likelihood to Recommend
4.4
(0 ratings)
9.9
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.6
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Availability
6.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
6.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
6.4
(0 ratings)
9.5
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.7
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Configurability
5.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
5.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
5.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
5.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
5.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
IBM SPSS StatisticsWolfram Mathematica
Likelihood to Recommend
SPSS is well-suited for the following: 1) User Behavior Analysis: SPSS handles large datasets to analyze user behavior data. 2) Customer Satisfaction / Foundational Surveys: SPSS facilitates analysis of quant data from satisfaction surveys, keeping us informed about customer needs and preferences. 3) A/B test analysis: SPSS statistical tools for A/B test analysis, which helps optimize user experience of our products. Scenarios where SPSS are less appropriate: 1) Qualitative Data Analysis: I do not use SPSS for open-ended survey responses/qual data. 2) Live/in-vivo data analysis: SPSS is not ideal for real-time data processing. 3) Complex Data Integration: SPSS isn’t the best fit for complex data integration tasks
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We are the judgement that Wolfram Mathematica is despite many critics based on the paradigms selected a mark in the fields of the markets for computations of all kind. Wolfram Mathematica is even a choice in fields where other bolide systems reign most of the market. Wolfram Mathematica offers rich flexibility and internally standardizes the right methodologies for his user community. Wolfram Mathematica is not cheap and in need of a hard an long learner journey. That makes it weak in comparison with of-the-shelf-solution packages or even other programming languages. But for systematization of methods Wolfram Mathematica is far in front of almost all the other. Scientist and interested people are able to develop themself further and Wolfram Matheamatica users are a human variant for themself. The reach out for modern mathematics based science is deep and a unique unified framework makes the whole field of mathematics accessable comparable to the brain of Albert Einstein. The paradigms incorporated are the most efficients and consist in assembly on the market. The mathematics is covering and fullfills not just education requirements but the demands and needs of experts.
Mathematica is incompatible with other systems for mCAx and therefore the borders between the systems are hard to overcome. Wolfram Mathematica should be consider one of the more open systems because other code can be imported and run but on the export side it is rathe incompatible by design purposes. A better standard for all that might solve the crisis but there is none in sight. Selection of knowledge of what works will be in the future even more focussed and general system might be one the lossy side. Knowledge of esthetics of what will be in the highest demand in necessary and Wolfram is not a leader in this field of science. Mathematics leves from gathering problems from application fields and less from the glory of itself and the formalization of this.
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Pros
  • SPSS has been around for quite a while and has amassed a large suite of functionality. One of its longest-running features is the ability to automate SPSS via scripting, AKA "syntax." There is a very large community of practice on the internet who can help newbies to quickly scale up their automation abilities with SPSS. And SPSS allows users to save syntax scripting directly from GUI wizards and configuration windows, which can be a real life-saver if one is not an experienced coder.
  • Many statistics package users are doing scientific research with an eye to publish reproducible results. SPSS allows you to save datasets and syntax scripting in a common format, facilitating attempts by peer reviewers and other researchers to quickly and easily attempt to reproduce your results. It's very portable!
  • SPSS has both legacy and modern visualization suites baked into the base software, giving users an easily mountable learning curve when it comes to outputting charts and graphs. It's very easy to start with a canned look and feel of an exported chart, and then you can tweak a saved copy to change just about everything, from colors, legends, and axis scaling, to orientation, labels, and grid lines. And when you've got a chart or graph set up the way you like, you can export it as an image file, or create a template syntax to apply to new visualizations going forward.
  • SPSS makes it easy for even beginner-level users to create statistical coding fields to support multidimensional analysis, ensuring that you never need to destructively modify your dataset.
  • In closing, SPSS's long and successful tenure ensures that just about any question a new user may have about it can be answered with a modicum of Google-fu. There are even several fully-fledged tutorial websites out there for newbie perusal.
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  • Doing the analysis is very good, plotting the data, getting the insight from data using this is easy and output looks pretty good
  • Solving mathematical problems, with detailed solutions step by step (mainly calculus problems)
  • You can also query this knowledge engine in simple English. It has ability to interpret that and will give you answer accordingly
  • Nowadays, it provides API to use, so you can do image processing, video/audio using this
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Cons
  • Lots of finicky work to do simple tasks
  • Usability is atrocious [in my opinion]. No ability to customize.
  • Would love to see product enhanced with interpretation features or citation tools (e.g., report results APA style)
  • Bulk editing variables would be an improvement
  • UI looks like its straight out of AOL days
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  • Should include more libraries and functions.
  • Should include more functions that can be used in Machine Learning.
  • Should include more functions that can be used in Data Science.
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Likelihood to Renew
It's super easy to use for newbies and super powerful for power users! It does EVERYTHING you are usually asked to do analytically. Their Help Desk is PHENOMENAL. And I find the upgrade and renewal price to be a good deal.
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No answers on this topic
Usability
SPSS is beginner friendly and user-friendly for beginner analysts and simple statistical tests. It's "click and go" interface does take some learning, but overall this is much easier than other programs I have used and seen. Compared to SAS software, SPSS takes a great deal less familiarizing and it not a matter of learning a coding language like SAS and RStudio.
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No answers on this topic
Reliability and Availability
SPSS can tend to crash when I am trying to do a lot of data. This can slow me down when I need to do a lot of data
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No answers on this topic
Performance
SPSS does the job, but it can be slow. I do have to plan a lot of time to get through a huge amount of data.
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No answers on this topic
Support Rating
I have not contacted IBM SPSS for support myself. However, our IT staff has for trying to get SPSS Text Analytics Module to work. The issue was never resolved, but I'm not sure if it was on the IT's end or on SPSS's end
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Wolfram Mathematica is a nice software package. It has very nice features and easy to install and use in your machine. Besides this, there is a nice support from Wolfram. They come to the university frequently to give seminars in Mathematica. I think this is the best thing they are doing. That is very helpful for graduate and undergraduate students who are using Mathematica in their research.
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Implementation Rating
Have a plan for managing the yearly upgrade cycle. Most users work in the desktop version, so there needs to be a mechanism for either pushing out new versions of the software or a key manager to deal with updated licensing keys. If you have a lot of users this needs to be planned for in advance.
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Alternatives Considered
If you have made it this far, you should have a very good idea of how SPSS stacks up the competition (data processing and analytics tools). Even the free ones, such as r Studio or Stata, are leaps and bounds ahead of SPSS. IBM is resting on a reputation developed nearly 30 years ago and has shown no desire to improve.
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The ability to manipulate algebraic expressions, nested lists, and data structures in Mathematica was unequalled when I first did the comparison. Since then, I've stuck with Mathematica mostly because it's "the tool I know."
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Scalability
I am neutral because I have not had to look into scalability since I am using as a student.
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No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
  • I found SPSS easier to use than SAS as it's more intuitive to me.
  • The learning curve to use SPSS is less compared to SAS.
  • I used SAS, to a much lesser extent than SPSS. However, it seems that SAS may be more suitable for users who understand programming. With SPSS, users can perform many statistical tests without the need to know programming.
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  • Mathematica is our "go to" environment for developing solutions for our clients, so I suppose you could say that it is solely responsible for our revenues. On occasion we do use other platforms but Mathematica is a core component of our offer to clients.
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ScreenShots

IBM SPSS Statistics Screenshots

Screenshot of SPSS Statistics Forecasting. This enables users to build time-series forecasts regardless of their skill level.Screenshot of SPSS Statistics Regression. These predict categorical outcomes and apply nonlinear regression procedures.Screenshot of IBM SPSS Statistics Neural Networks. These can discover complex relationships and improve predictive models.Screenshot of IBM SPSS Statistics Curated Help. These can interpret correlation output.Screenshot of IBM SPSS Statistics AI Output Assistant interprets statistical output in easy to consume language