Interactive graphics for the Macintosh: software review of FlexiGraphs.

While this product is clearly unique, its usefulness to individuals outside small business environments is somewhat limited. FlexiGraphs is, however, a reasonable first attempt to design a microcomputer software package that controls data through interactive editing within a graph. Although the graphics capabilities of mainframe programs such as MINITAB (Ryan, Joiner, & Ryan, 1981) and the graphic manipulations available through exploratory data analysis (e.g., Velleman & Hoaglin, 1981) will not be surpassed anytime soon by this program, a researcher may want to add this program to a software library containing other Macintosh statistics, drawing, and graphics programs if only to obtain the easy-to-obtain curve fitting and line smoothing options. I welcome the opportunity to review the enhanced "scientific" version of FlexiGraphs that the author of the program indicates is currently under development. An MS-DOS version of the program should be available within the year.