Blossom Statistical Package

Blossom is an interactive program for making statistical comparisons with distance-function based permutation tests and for testing parameters estimated in linear models with permutation procedures.   

Blossom provides a user friendly statistical software package specifically for biological and ecological applications.  Statistical procedures used in Blossom are unique from those offered in commercially available software and include the multi-response permutation procedures and regression quantile estimates and permutation tests for linear models. The availability of these procedures allows scientists to better address natural resource issues important to managers. 

Blossom is written to run on 32-bit Intel computers running Windows NT, 2000, and XP. It will run on Windows 98 and ME. The code could run under Linux using the Lahey and Winteracter Linux versions with some modification.  The distribution includes a console version of Blossom which runs from a Command Prompt window (DOS box). Both versions include the ability to process command files. 

Internally, Blossom has some limits on the amount of data it can support. Limitations include: 1) Number of elements in a Blossom command: 1024 (command plus all variables and options and delimiters); 2) Maximum single command element length in ASCII representation: 25 bytes; 3) Maximum size of Blossom command: 8192 bytes; 4) Number of variables: 1024; 5) Number of observations: about 2 billion; 6) Number of quantiles in a Median and Quantile (MEDQ) analysis: 250,000,000; 7)Number of observations in a MEDQ: 250,000,000; 8) Number of groups in one MEDQ: 250,000,000; 9) Maximum group size in MEDQ: 250,000,000; 10) Maximum number of variables in a MEDQ analysis: 255; 11) Maximum number of blocks in an Exact Multiresponse Randomize Block Procedure: 9; 12) Data file size: Limit of Windows Virtual Memory (depends on associated memory required for an analysis); 13) Filename size: 25 bytes; 14) Variable name size: 25 bytes (12 characters for SYSTAT files);    15) Title length (optional, for labeling statistical results output): 80 bytes; 16) Maximum significant digits of double precision numbers: about 15; 17) Missing value internal representation: 0.10 X 10-37 (no datum within a data file should have this value); 18) Some specific Blossom statistical analyses require minimum numbers of elements: a) Minimum number of observations for Multi-Response Permutation Procedure (MRPP): 6; b) Minimum number of groups for MRPP: 2; c) Minimum group size for MRPP: 2; d) Minimum number of observations for Exact MRPP: 3; e) Minimum number of groups for an Exact MRPP: 2; f)    Minimum group size for Exact MRPP: 2; g) Minimum number of groups for Multiresponse Randomized Block Procedure (MRBP): 2; h) Minimum number of groups for an MRBP: 2; i)    Minimum number of blocks for Exact MRBP: 2; j) Minimum number of cases for Permutation Test for Matched Pairs (PTMP): 3; k) Minimum number of observations for Multi-Response Sequence Procedure (MRSP): 6; l) Minimum number of observations for Exact MRSP: 2.