Treesta: a system for supporting statistical analysis using ANOVA

Existing statistical packages provide statisticians with a rich set of functions, but when it comes to organizing the work these tools simply present a linear history of the user’s activity. Treesta is a system that supports a more informed process of statistical analysis. It is a text-based interface that stands between the user and Matlab, and serves as an organizational, as well as representational, tool for the process of statistical analysis. As an organizational tool, Treesta categorizes the user’s work into a tree of workspaces, with their own variables, figures, and history. Moreover, the user can annotate each workspace. As a representational tool, Treesta depicts the whole environment and summarizes each workspace. A qualitative user study with a single experienced Matlab user confirmed our assumptions about usefulness of the tree structure, the ability to follow various paths, the annotation tool and the presentation of the structure of the environment.