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Hitting the market: S-Plus 5.0

MathSoft has enriched its technical calculation and analytical software line with a new statistical data-mining product, S-PLUS 5.0.

Developed in cooperation with a global investment bank, S-PLUS 5.0 specifically targets complex analysis needs and requirements of the finance industry. According to MathSoft officials, S-PLUS 5.0 accounts for global time-zones, daylight saving and international holidays appli-cable in risk management, derivative products analysis, portfolio optimisation and prediction of returns in a global financial marketplace.

It is powered by the recently enhanced Lucent Technologies' S programming language, that is said to speed up statistical data mining and to present enhanced options of importing data from relational data-bases and applications, including SAS and SPSS.

Bootstrap, jackknife, new regression and covariance estimation, enhanced parametric survival and reliability analysis are amongst other new features of S-PLUS 5.0, officials claim.

While HP, SGI, AIX and DEC copies are expected to hit the market by mid-year, S-PLUS 5.0 for Solaris and Linux are available now from CSIRO, with price determined by the type of buyer - commercial, government or academic.