The course introduces students to the basic principles that should be acquired to mathematicians, statisticians, economists and financiers and others in order to use software packages R, SPSS and MATLAB for their scientific research and practical work. An overview is given about the appropriate application features and options of the software packages R, SPSS and MATLAB focusing primarily on the students’ needs to work out different practice, bachelor and other scientific works. As the students are already familiar with the basics of the program R doing practical work in mathematical statistics, then some additional feathers will be shown mostly connected with nonparametric statistical procedures. The basic functions and options of SPSS and MATLAB will be outlined comparing them with the program R.

Course objectives are: (1) to be able to use computer programs R, SPSS and MATLAB for data processing,(2) to understand the basic techniques of nonparametric and robust statistical methods and to be able to use them in program R, (3) to know the main advantages and disadvantages of R, SPSS and MATLAB in order to choose the most appropriate program for the data analyses or solving scientific problems.