What statistical software should I use? And does it actually matter?

With so many options available, a question that researchers often ask us as biostatisticians is, “what statistical software should I use?” When faced with performing statistical analyses, if you search online, talk to your colleagues or supervisors, or browse your favourite bookstore, you will potentially find many, many options. Wikipedia lists over one hundred! This article will focus on general advice and look at software commonly used in the health sciences, specifically (in alphabetical order), GraphPad Prism, IBM SPSS Statistics, Microsoft Excel, R, SAS, and Stata.