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This is a dated announcement. The material in this announcement could be superceded by more current announcements.

SPSS Inc. Predictive Analytics More Accessible to Business Users with Latest Version of Statistics Software

PASW® Statistics Now Offers Users Wide Array of Open Source Statistical Functions and Procedures in R and Python

CHICAGO, 07/14/09 —

Organizations with a solid foundation of statistical analysis to predict reliable outcomes and guide business decisions are consistently generating more revenue, controlling expenses and improving risk management.

Now, SPSS Inc. (Nasdaq: SPSS), the leading provider of Predictive Analytics software and solutions, brings even greater power of prediction with the launch of PASW® Statistics 18 (formerly SPSS Statistics), the latest version of its leading statistics software suite used by commercial, government and academic organizations to solve business and research problems.

Part of the SPSS Predictive Analytics Software (PASW) portfolio of products, PASW Statistics 18 combines new and enhanced capabilities to support the entire analytic process — preparing data, running analysis and creating and delivering reports. The latest version has innovative new features that automate time-consuming operations, new analysis and reporting capabilities that improve results, and expanded ability for users to create their own analytical functionality using open source — R and Python^® — programming languages.

Jason Verlen, chief product strategist for SPSS, said, “PASW Statistics 18 delivers incredibly robust functionality that increases the usability of advanced analytics for all audiences, enabling business users, analysts and statistical programmers to collaborate on a single platform. We are also excited to deliver more flexibility, greater choice and customization with PASW Statistics by welcoming open source users into our Predictive Analytics framework.”

Businesses continue to rely on PASW Statistics for marketing effectiveness; administrative research; human resources and resource planning; medical, scientific, clinical and social science research;

planning and forecasting; quality improvement; reporting; and ad hoc decision making. PASW Statistics also remains thechoiceof academia worldwide that rely on it in classroom instruction as they prepare students for successful professional careers.

Dan Vesset, program vice president of industry analyst firm IDC's business analytics research, said, “It’s essential in today’s data-driven business world for organizations to not only incorporate sound statistical analysis into their data assets, but also empower all users, especially business users, with robust analytical tools that provide ease of use and deliver results quickly and accurately. Statistics technology, like the latest version of PASW Statistics 18, is a key building block of any advanced analytics environment and enables organizations to continuously improve business processes and surpass the competition.”

Greater Speed to Results for Business Users

• PASW Direct Marketing gives marketing professionals a straightforward, easy way to perform analyses to plan and carry out more effective marketing campaigns. A single, intuitive interface guides marketers with six techniques to better understand customers: RFM (recency-frequency-monetary) analysis; cluster analysis; and, prospect profiling to identify those with the greatest propensity to purchase; test the effectiveness of direct response packages; and, analyze response rate by ZIP or postal code.
• Automated Data Preparation simplifies a previously tedious and repetitive, time-consuming process by automatically detecting and correcting quality errors, and imputing missing values. It also provides a report with recommendations to ensure the quality of data used. For example, if large amounts of data are missing from a data set, it will respond with a “Do not use” recommendation.

“I look forward to the new PASW Statistics 18 because the new features and enhancements, such as automated data preparation and enhanced reporting capabilities, will make the analysis easier and my job more productive. Our organization can now do a better job of protecting our community, rehabilitating offenders and assisting youth in abstaining from delinquent behavior.”

• PASW Bootstrapping creates more dependable and stable estimates for predictive models to ensure the most reliable results. PASW Bootstrapping estimates the sampling distribution by re-sampling with replacement from the original sample.
• Nonparametric Testing enables users to make multiple comparisons within non-normal data. Most statistics assume a normal distribution — bell-shaped curve — but because not all business problems have data that meet this assumption, special algorithms are required. Non-normal data distributions occur in situations such as insurance claims where the majority of claims are $0. At times, the incidence of claims is small compared to the number of customers who never make a claim, so nonparametric methods are required to correctly assess differences in claim amounts between groups (such as different types of policies).
• Interactive Model Viewer provides greater visualization of data and models, allowing users to explore and compare results, and determine the best algorithm for a particular data set. For instance, it will graphically show results of Automated Data Preparation, or of the nonparametric tests.

Increased Accessibility to Open Source

PASW Statistics 18 now allows access to R and Python programming languages with the introduction of PASW Statistics Developer. With PASW Statistics Developer, any R and Python package can be easily wrapped in PASW Statistics syntax so it takes on the appearance of a standard procedure, which is then easily invoked through the product. It can also be given a dialog box interface and R packages can produce standard tabular output, making both indistinguishable from PASW Statistics.

Available in 10 languages, PASW Statistics Developer is the ideal solution for users who want to employ thousands of statistical functions in R and/or Python that can be accessed and executed by anyone familiar with PASW Statistics. It includes the core functionality found in PASW Statistics Base — the flagship module containing the most fundamental and essential analysis, such as data access and management capabilities, programmability options, Custom Dialog Builder, report creation and deployment.

SPSS is now offering more flexibility to users by no longer requiring PASW Statistics Base for installing and running related modules, since capabilities such as data access and management, and reporting have been added to every module. All PASW Statistics modules can now be installed and run separately, or in conjunction with any other module.

About SPSS Inc.

SPSS Inc. is a leading global provider of Predictive Analytics software and solutions. The Company’s complete portfolio of Predictive Analytics Software (PASW) products – data collection, statistics, modeling and deployment – captures people’s attitudes and opinions, predicts outcomes of future customer interactions, and then acts on these insights by embedding analytics into business processes. SPSS Solutions address interconnected business objectives across an entire organization by focusing on the convergence of analytics, IT architecture and business process. Commercial, government and academic customers worldwide rely on SPSS technology as a competitive advantage in attracting, retaining and growing customers, while reducing fraud and mitigating risk. Founded in 1968, SPSS is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. For more information, please visit www.spss.com.

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