Poll Results (Feb-04-2007): Toolbox Use

The Feb-04-2007 posting, Poll (Feb-04-2007): Toolbox Use featured the following poll question: Which MATLAB Toolboxes, if any, do you use? After 1 week, the poll has closed, with 27 Data Mining in MATLAB readers responding (1 of which was myself). The final results are:

1. None (base MATLAB product only) (0 Votes)
2. MATLAB Toolboxes from the MathWorks only (11 Votes)
3. MATLAB Toolboxes from other sources only (1 Votes)
4. MATLAB Toolboxes both from the MathWorks and other sources (15 Votes)

Interestingly, all reported using toolboxes. All voters but 1 indicated using toolboxes from the MathWorks.

How significant are these results? A quick bootstrap of 100,000 replicates yields the following:


>> Poll = [repmat(2,11,1); repmat(3,1,1); repmat(4,15,1)];
>> Replicates = Poll(ceil(27 * rand(27,1e5)));
>> Count2 = mean(Replicates == 2);
>> Count3 = mean(Replicates == 3);
>> Count4 = mean(Replicates == 4);
>> prctile(Count2,[5 95])

ans =

0.2593 0.5556

>> prctile(Count3,[5 95])

ans =

0 0.1111

>> prctile(Count4,[5 95])

ans =

0.4074 0.7037


So (roughly, due to limited precision provided by small sample size), with a 90% confidence interval, use of MathWorks Toolboxes only is somewhere between 26% and 56%, use of non-MathWorks Toolboxes only is between 0% and 11%, and use of both is between 41% and 70%.

Thanks to everyone who voted!