Some of the strengths and weaknesses of these two packages are summarized in Table 2 below. After weighing these, I'm still not sure what I'll do the next time I teach the course. On the one hand, I liked being able to offer students their choice of software packages. Several students said that they appreciated the opportunity to learn a new package. On the other hand, a fair amount of class time was lost in explaining two packages, when most students really only wanted to know about one of them. Given the limited amount of class time that I have to teach the underlying statistical concepts, I'm leaning toward using just Excel in the course next time around. Though it will require a little more effort from the students, I think it will give the class more focus and the students a solid introduction to an extremely powerful and prevalent analytical tool.

Table 2: Pros and cons of using Minitab and Excel for an introductory statistics class.

Minitab Pro	Excel Con
Easier for the novice to use - can do most tasks with just a few clicks. Uses common statistical terminology. Generates a default histogram without user-specified intervals. Performs almost all inferences discussed in a first statistics course.	Harder for the novice to use - often must enter cell formulas and cell ranges. Occasionally misuses terminology, e.g., checking the box for "confidence level for the mean" yields the CI's margin of error. Harder to get a histogram, e.g., user must set up a column of "bins." Doesn't have built-in procedures for confidence intervals and 1-sample t-tests (although these can be performed).
Excel Pro	Minitab Con
Interface dialogs are consistent and have a modern look and feel. Flexible. Easy to control and modify the location of input data and output. Graphs are dynamically updated, and can be embedded in Word files. Wide use in business and other courses.	Function interfaces are not consistent; many features are buried underneath several layers of dialog boxes. Somewhat inflexible. Can't control location of output; hard to modify graphs. Graphs are static: if the data change, the graphing process must be restarted. Limited use in business, other courses.

References:

Moore, David S., The Basic Practice of Statistics, Second Edition, W. H. Freeman, New York, 2000.

Carver, Robert, Doing Data Analysis with Minitab 12, Duxbury Press, Pacific Grove, CA., 1999.

Berk, Kenneth N. and Patrick Carey, Data Analysis with Microsoft© Excel, Duxbury Press, Pacific Grove, CA., 2000.

This article is dedicated to the memory of SFSU Professor Al Schainblatt,
who graciously shared with me many of his insights about how to teach statistics.