Free online statistical analysis tools

While all sorts of office applications are going online -- Google Docs, Zoho, and they're getting better all the time -- Web 2.0 hasn't come to more complicated applications.

Online stats packages are available, but visit a few of the apps listed on this page and you might come away with the same impression I have -- that have a sort of homemade feel, and a mission to discourage all but the geekiest stats geeks.

Maybe the market for it isn't large enough to bring the sector into the mainstream. Yet. Or it's entirely possible the largely academic audience for such tools actually likes the 1996 vibe. Don't laugh; there's something to that. It means to a user, "This is so not a commercial gig. We're not slicksters here; we're not pitching you."