NIST launches statistical reference datasets (StRD) Web service

NIST announced the release of the Statistical Reference Datasets (StRD) Web site (http://www.itl.nist.gov/ div898/strd/). This site contains reference datasets for the objective evaluation of the computational accuracy of statistical software. Users and developers of statistical software can use these datasets to ensure and improve software accuracy.

The StRD Web pages contain datasets with certified computational results in four areas: analysis of variance, linear regression, nonlinear regression, and univariate summary statistics. The collection includes both generated and "real-world" datasets, of varying levels of difficulty. Generated datasets are designed to challenge specific computations. Real-world datasets include both benign and challenging datasets from the NIST laboratories and other sources. The certification method for each statistical method is described on the corresponding Web page.