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What´s New in This Version?

April 6, 2013 -- Version 3.01

Minor fixes and updates include revision of Dr. Soe's email address. Thanks to Dr. Annette O'Connor of the University of Iowa Veterinary College, a bug in entering more than one stratum in TwoByTwo Tables has been fixed. TwoByTwo tables now handles entry of a zero cell correctly. We are grateful to Yaya Sarro of the International Center for Excellence in Research in Mali for pointing out another bug that affected the ANOVA, Means, and T-test modules. It is now fixed.

April 4, 2013 (Dr. Dean's 75th Birthday) -- Version 3.0

This version of OpenEpi will detect "smartphones", such as Android phones and the iPhone, and adjust its activities to work better with small screens. In the Settings module, you can choose the screen configuration as Smartphone, Laptop, or Auto(matic) for testing purposes or if the Automatic setting fails to detect your smartphone.

In Smartphone configuration, the menu appears on a single screen and then brings up the applications as requested so that they also occupy an entire screen. Because OpenEpi uses a large amount of Javascript for calculation of the statistics, it may take a while to download all the code for a particular module. If you get tired of waiting, click the "Menu" tab to return to the menu, and then try again.

Not all smartphones support the level of Javascript that is required for OpenEpi, and the authors do not have examples of many phones for testing purposes. Please accept that you are on your own to determine whether OpenEpi functions correctly on your brand of smartphone, and do some testing of relevent modules to see if they give the same answers obtained in OpenEpi on a laptop, Epi Info, or other statistical programs, before departing for remote statistical missions carrying only your cell phone.

The statistical code is the same for smartphones and laptops in OpenEpi, but there could be differences in rounding, formatting, and the completion of procedures that are problematic. Although all of the OpenEpi files can be downloaded as a Zip file from the Download item on the menu, it is probably best with smartphones to run OpenEpi from website, using the phone's browser. Since the phone connection is not the same as the one used by laptops, cell phones can provide Internet service in areas where wi-fi is not available.

For those interested in programming details, the use of "frames" in HTML on the browser--once a handy way of organising the screen, has been discouraged or discontinued by major browsers. We have therefore reprogrammed OpenEpi so that each module is a separate unit not requiring a "home" menu with frames. Most of the modules use the same source (js) files, and these are available in the browser cache after the first module has been loaded.

The menu giving access to the programs is no longer part of a central application, but is reloaded with each module. In practical terms, this means that you can run or provide a link to a module like Proportion by finding and running its HTM file, in this case www.openepi.com/proportion.htm. It is no longer necessary to go through the EpiMenu module to run Proportion. Hence, if you would like to write an online course in statistics, using OpenEpi, you can now link to individual modules from an Internet page, a Word document, or a PowerPoint slide. Depending on your choice of screen configuration in the Settings module, the chosen statistical module will appear with or without the menu panel on the left side of the screen. In Smartphone configuration, clicking the Menu button in the upper left corner of the screen will bring up the menu.

September 2010 --Version 2.3.1

This is a version only slightly updated, to be included with the distribution of Epi Info 3.5.2. A statistical error in the ANOVA module that produced slightly incorrect values for the Chi Square and p value of Bartlett's test for Equality of Variance has been corrected, so that the result now agrees closely with the one obtained in Epi Info. Small statistical problems in the SMR and ANOVA modules have been corrected.

The download files have been produced again so that the latest changes are present in the downloaded zip or msi file for local use.

May 2009 --Version 2.3

Fixes:

Thanks to Viju Moses,the Fisher Exact test in Two by Two tables can no longer amuse R-language fans by producing a p value greater than 1.0.

Damien Jolley wrote from Melbourne to suggest formatting and usability changes in the t-test module, and these have been made. No more p values with 28 zeroes, and the order of the two series being compared is now fixed to facilitate comparison among multiple tests.

Enrique Acosta, Cienfuegos, Cuba, discovered and provided fixes for a bug in the code of AppHelper.js that named the file, EpiTable.htm, with a lower-case "t", a problem in some systems but ignored by others.

Manuel Luis Ribeiro pointed to a problem with the Exact p value calculation in the SMR module, when the observed value is less than the expected.

Rubén Leta Petracca, with an email address based in Spain, reported an ugly bug that crashed the Macintosh Safari browser. This is no longer present.

Dr. David Looney pointed out that Linux does not recognize AnovaIn.GIF as being the same as AnoveIn.gif. All the .GIF files have been renamed to .gif.

Difficulties with overzealous security in Firefox 3.x browsers have been addressed with a message telling how to configure Firefox if necessary. This is only a problem when running OpenEpi from local disk in Firefox 3. Thanks to Hans Reider, Switzerland, for pointing to the problem.

Visiting all these contributors would require a broad and fascinating tour of the world. Isn't the Internet wonderful!!

We have ambitious plans and some crude prototypes of a text input module that will allow entering or pasting data. We also hope to offer reading of data from files and saving it with Google Gears.

March 6, 2008 --Version 2.2.1

Fixes an error in the ANOVA code where the t-value for confidence intervals used ni rather than ni-1 for the degrees of freedom. The difference is not great except with small numbers, but now the results match those of SAS and SPSS.

March 6, 2008 --Version 2.2.1

Fixes an error in the ANOVA code where the t-value for confidence intervals used ni rather than ni-1 for the degrees of freedom. The difference is not great except with small numbers, but now the results match those of SAS and SPSS.

The Matched Case-Control study module (MatchCC.HTM) no longer responds to the table configuration settings in Language/Options/Settings; it never should have done so.

The Javascript for tracking usage on the (Brinkster) website has been cleaned up somewhat. It collects information that is available to any website, but it allows aggregation of the statistics in useful ways: for example, which programs are most used, and which countries the users are in (approximately).

As of March 3, the OpenEpi site had been accessed 1,000,000 times by users in 155 countries.

September 24, 2007

You can set OpenEpi for ENGLISH, SPANISH, FRENCH or ITALIAN, in Language/Options/Settings. Everything except the validation and background documents has been translated. Demo data files still have English headings, but the results will be in the desired language.

August 24, 2007

You can now use OpenEpi in SPANISH, by choosing ES in Language/Options/Settings. Many small changes have been made to facilitate future translations. Please send comments and suggestions on the translation.

July 17, 2007

Cleaned up the English translation file to eliminate words from previous versions. Fixed a problem with the OELinker that occurred when OpenEpi was installed under Program Files, by inserting quotation marks around the file path.

April 24, 2007

The underlying software framework was changed to provide a tabbed interface and eliminate popup windows except to display help files. All the previous modules work in the new framework without alteration. For more details, see the developer documentation.

There is now an installation program for Windows computers that can be downloaded as an MSI (Microsoft Windows Install) file. It places several icons on the desktop to allow running the standard version of OpenEpi, the version that saves output to the OpenEpi/results folder, and, if you have Epi Info installed on the same computer, a program to insert links to OpenEpi in the Epi Info menu. The link will be placed on the Utilities menu, just below the one for Statcalc, if you chose to use this option.

News.htm

September 30, 2005

Two additional modules (t test and ANOVA) related to continuous variables were added. t test is for comparison of means from two independent sample. One-way ANOVA is to compare two and more independent sample means.

July 20, 2005

A scientific calculator was added in the main menu, and the introduction to 'ActiveEpi' website (more details available in CD-ROM and text) has been linked for those interested.

July 13, 2005

Modules for calculation of power for Unmatched Case-Control studies, Cohort studies, Cross-Sectional studies, Randomized Clinical Trials as well as studies that compare two sample means were added. An additional module for sample size estimation comparing two means, was appended under the Sample Size section.

April 15, 2005

New modules that calculate desired confidence intervals for sample mean as well as for sample median and other percentiles, have been added. Users can download the new version of the OpenEpi package at 'Download OpenEpi' from the Menu bar on the left.

January 14 , 2005

Small changes in Sample Size for Proportion (allow absolute precision up to 50%) and Matched Case Control (does not add 0.5 if A and/or D cells are zero). Menu updated.

Previous NEWS items have been moved to a History file, accessed through a separate menu item.