Yes, it’s true.
SPSS has changed its name to PASW.
It stands for Predictive Analytics Software.
The company has not changed its name–it’s still SPSS, Inc. And the software itself has not changed. Only the name of the software has changed.
You can get a full list of the new names at http://www.spss.com/software/product-name-guide/?tab=1.
The change is intended to reflect “SPSS Inc.’s leadership role in Predictive Analytics.”
If you’re not familiar with the term Predictive Analytics, it is a collection of methods, including statistics, operations research, data mining, and monte carlo techniques for financial and customer predictive forecasting. It’s business oriented, not science oriented.
I have to say, as someone who has used SPSS for 18 years to do statistics on scientific data, my gut reaction is that we statistics users are like the devoted friend who becomes taken for granted once the new pretty, rich new girl moves into town.
But in reality, nothing has changed. That’s how things were going anyway–it’s just spelled out now. SPSS (I’m not ready to call it PASW yet) is still the same statistical software for those of us who use it for statistics.
