MIX 2.0 Lite

CNET Editors' review

by: CNET staff on August 22, 2011

We admit that hearing the term "meta-analysis" always leads us to imagine Groucho saying, "I never met a nalysis I didn't like," but the technique of combining the results of several studies to achieve a more accurate overview of the subject is nothing funny to statisticians. MIX 2.0 Lite is a free add-on for Microsoft Excel that performs professional-level meta-analyses from Excel's ribbon. It offers more than 20 built-in datasets taken from published methods, plus a data wizard that cites book and page number for users who want to look it up themselves. We tried MIX in Excel from Office 2010.

We opened Excel and then clicked MIX 2.0 Lite's executable, which installed the add-on as a tab on Excel's ribbon toolbar. We clicked the tab, which brought up MIX's controls on the ribbon. We clicked Start MIX on the Main button and received the program's setup data wizard. Our options were to start the wizard, view tutorials, check for updates, and upgrade to the paid version. We opted to start the data wizard. It offered a drop-down list containing four books to choose from and another list from which to select datasets from the books. The books are Borenstein et al, Sutton et al, Egger et al, and Glasziou et al. We made our choices and created a Workbook to save them in with the help of another small wizard. The statistical presentations were all fine and clear, with no clutter or issues related to the spreadsheet's functionality. However, that's as far as we were able to take MIX 2.0 Lite. This sophisticated tool certainly wasn't lacking--quite the opposite: our understanding of statistics in general and meta-analysis in particular wasn't up the job.

What we can say about MIX 2.0 is that it definitely makes it easy to apply meta-analysis to Excel. It's certainly not for statistical dabblers and dilettantes, though. If you're an Excel user who is fairly well-versed in statistics and meta-analysis, we highly recommend this free add-on.

 

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Publisher's Description

From BiostatXL:

MIX 2.0 is software to perform professional meta-analyses from inside Excel. It is compatible with Excel 2007 and uses the new ribbon interface. It features 20+ built-in datasets from popular books about meta-analysis and uses a structured, step-by-step approach to meta-analysis of exploration, synthesis, and evaluation. The Datawizard allows users to look up each data set by book and page number, facilitating easy reproduction of the analyses in the books. For users who want to enter and analyze their own datasets, a Professional version of MIX 2.0 is available.

What's new in this version: New start-up check for output sheet. New default settings interface. New transformations for proportion meta-analysis (Freeman-Tukey arc-sine and logit). New interface for study in and exclusions. New automated subgroup analysis with subgroup forest plots. New implementation of weighting sensitivity plot. New report wizard. More extensive forest plot label formatting. Improved the handling of correlation coefficient transformations. Improved Bayesian analysis interface. Integrated enhanced metaf... See all new features

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