Photo by Csaba Hegedűs

Photo by Csaba Hegedűs

The Faculty of Business and Economics jumped…. and bought the school license of JMP from SAS.

On the 4th October Dr. Volker Kraft, JMP Academic Ambassador from Germany, held a ‘Train-the-Trainer’ seminar introducing JMP statistical software (pronounced as ‘jump’) from SAS. The lecturers of the Faculty of Business and Economics got familiar with this new tool and learnt the basics, while were also provided with useful tips and tricks.

In 1989, the first version of JMP was developed for Macs in the USA by John Sall, co-founder and Executive VP of SAS Institute, who initially called the programme ‘John’s Macintosh Project’. As the software became more and more detailed and got easier and easier to use, SAS Marketing decided to keep the original abbreviation (JMP) which now refers to the feeling of a light jump (“idea of a lively product that jumped responsively to the user’s wishes”). According to Dr. Kraft the most significant competitive advantage of JMP is that it is easy to use and powerful at the same time. The software is not limited to statisticians; also less technical students can easily ‘jump’ into statistical discovery as the software is interactive and visual.

The Faculty of Business and Economics and SAS are planning to follow up this initial workshop with several joint projects, so Dr. Kraft will have the opportunity to come back and deliver more topic focused workshops in the future.