Minitab Japanese Release 14.2 Maintenance Update

October 2005

Minitab Japanese Release 14.2 Maintenance Update page (in Japanese)

The Minitab Japanese 14.2 maintenance release provides the latest product updates to Minitab Japanese 14 and offers the highest levels of performance and quality available for Minitab. It is strongly recommended that all Minitab Japanese 14 users upgrade to Minitab Japanese 14.2.

Warning: All instances of Minitab must be closed before running the 14.2 maintenance update.

This update DOES apply to the Japanese-language versions of Minitab 14 or 14.12 for Windows. When the update is finished, the version number of your software will be Minitab Japanese 14.2.

This update DOES NOT apply to the Minitab Japanese 14 trial, Student 14, to 5-month or 12-month rental versions of Minitab Japanese 14 from e-academy.com, or to any earlier release of Minitab.

• Download Options
• Installation Instructions
• New Menu in 14.2
• Enhancements in 14.2
• Issues Resolved in 14.2

Download options

• OPTION 1 -mtb142japanesepatch.exe (39.3 MB) Standard Download (recommended for downloads using high speed Internet connections).
  
  In Windows Explorer, double-click the file (mtb142japanesepatch.exe). This will start the installation program.
  
• OPTION 2 -MTB142JapanesePatchDM.exe (404K) Download the Minitab 14.2 update using the Download Manager (recommended for downloads using standard telephone lines).
  
  The Download Manager is a small program (MTB142JapanesePatchDM.exe) that helps to track the progress of your download and to reconnect and complete your download if it is interrupted for any reason. After an interruption, the program automatically reconnects and resumes the Minitab 14.2 update download at the point where it stopped. This option also allows you to pause the download and resume at any time. Download the MTB142JapanesePatchDM.exe to your computer, then double-click to run it. The program will then connect to the Minitab Web site and download the 14.2 update for you.

Installation instructions

Warning: All instances of Minitab must be closed before running the 14.2 maintenance update.

If you use Decisioneering Crystal Ball software, read these instructions before installing the maintenance update.

1. Download the file MTB142Japanesepatch.exe, either directly or using the Download Manager.
   
   If you are downloading directly, save the file in the Minitab program directory on your computer. For most users this is located in "C:\Program Files\Minitab 14 Japanese\".
   
   If you are using the Download Manager, select the Minitab program directory as the target location to save this file. For most users this is located in "C:\Program Files\Minitab 14 Japanese\".
   
   
2. Make sure that mtb142japanesepatch.exe is in your Minitab program directory. For most users this is located in "C:\Program Files\Minitab 14 Japanese\". NOTE: Make sure you select the directory, but do NOT select the existing file Mtb14.exe. Including the filename in the path will cause the patch file to overwrite the executable file.
   
3. In Windows Explorer, double-click the mtb142japanesepatch.exe file. The update dialog box will appear. Follow the instructions on the screen.

New menu in Minitab Release 14.2

A bug fix was made for Japanese 14.2 that affects customized menus and toolbars. If you have customized your Minitab menus or toolbars prior to installing the Japanese 14.2 update, that customization will be overwritten with the default menus and toolbars. You will need to re-customize the menus and toolbars. Options set under Tools > Options in Japanese 14.12 will be retained. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

The following enhancements and design changes have been made to Minitab 14.2:

1. Translation of statistical terminology was reviewed and improved. You will notice these changes throughout the menus, dialogs, output, and documentation.

2. Users may now edit strings, delete rows or columns, and assign different fonts to header and body text in legends and tables in graphs. For example, users can remove statistics from tables in a capability analysis graph.

3. The ability to drag and edit Pie Chart slice labels is now available.

4. Two new graph file formats, GIF (a raster format) and enhanced metafile (a vector format), have been added.

5. The Chi Square Goodness of Fit – Single Categorical Variable feature provides a way of testing whether a categorical data set follows a multinomial distribution with certain proportions.

6. Chi Square Goodness of Fit – Poisson Distribution functionality is now available to test whether a data set follows a Poisson distribution.

7. In both Gage R&R (Crossed) and Gage R&R (Nested) analyses, users may input the process tolerance and compare the tolerance with the process variation. The %Tolerance output reflects the comparison. The tolerance may be an interval value of the upper specification limit minus the lower specification limit or it may be either a lower or upper specification limit.

8. For the Six Sigma module Product Report, users can now pick a different percentage bound on the defects per total opportunity (DPO) in the calculations of throughput yield (YTP), defects per million opportunities (DPMO) and the short-term benchmark Z (Z.ST) when no defects are observed or when the number of defects is equal to the total opportunities.

9. The catalog of Factorial Designs has been expanded to include a 5-factor, 16-run design with 8 blocks.

10. The method for estimating the upper control limit for a multivariate Exponentially Weighted Moving Average (EWMA) chart has been improved.

11. Reliability/Survival Distribution Analyses, Regression with Life Data, Accelerated Life Testing and Probit Analysis have an option to store cumulative failure probabilities.

12. The labels for control chart lines, reference lines, and percentile lines can be selected and moved.

13. For controls charts, Times Series Plots and Area Graphs that include or exclude data rows, the default behavior is now equivalent to subsetting the data. As a result of this change, control charts with stages that have less than two data points are now produced, as long as there is at least one stage with multiple data points. A "Leave gaps for excluded points" option is available on the Data Options dialog box that will show gaps for excluded data points in the lines and scale.

14. The Query ODBC dialog box now has an option to list the available fields in either alphabetical or database order. Alphabetical order is the default.

15. The Layout Tool is now available for graphs that are created using a BY variable resulting in separate graphs.

16. On Cause-and-Effect diagrams, sub-cause branches are now moveable.

17. An option in Tools > Options is now available for toggling the display of CCpk values on Capability graphs and in Session window output. The default setting is to not show the CCpk values. New subcommands, SCCPK and HCCPK, have been added to either show or hide the CCpk values, respectively. The option in the storage dialog box for storing CCpk values still remains.

18. Confidence intervals for negative Cpk and Ppk values are now calculated.

19. Minitab now recognizes global currency symbols that contain more than one character, such as HK$ (Hong Kong) or R$ (Brazil).

20. In Capability Analysis, the methods for calculating confidence limits for Z.Bench were not well established in the literature and have been changed to a more accepted method. When no distribution parameters are specified and both upper and lower specification limits are included, Capability Analysis will no longer calculate an upper confidence interval bound for Z.Bench. When no distribution parameters are specified and only a single specification limit is included, Capability Analysis will still calculate upper and lower confidence interval bounds, but the results will be different. When any distribution parameter is specified, Capability Analysis will no longer calculate confidence intervals for Z.Bench.

21. Diagnostic gathering capabilities have been added to aid in determining the source of any serialization problems or project corruptions.

22. For the Six Sigma Product Report, changes have been made to the calculations used for throughput yield (YTP).

23. The installation has been rewritten to take advantage of functionality available in the latest version of InstallShield and to alleviate many of the problems previously encountered. The new Minitab installation:
    • Sets standards for file versioning to avoid conflicts that occurred because either newer or older versions of files would overwrite existing files and disable applications on the user's system.
    • Includes rollback capabilities to handle failed installations that would leave fragments of files, registry entries, etc. on the user's system.
    • Provides repair capabilities to handle broken applications.
    • Handles many common uninstallation problems such as fragments of an application left behind and handling shared resources so uninstalling one application does not disable another.
    • Minimizes security problems because the installations are handled by a system service.

The following issues have been resolved in Minitab Japanese 14.2:

1. Internal graphics errors occur when launching Minitab and when creating graphs if the computer has an ATI Radeon Mobility 9000 video card and is connected to a projector.

2. When logged onto a computer without administrative privileges, launching Minitab results in an error that says "Failed to update system registry."

3. When attempting to save a file to a location that is write-protected, the error message saying that the file has not been saved may not be noticed by the user if the Session window is not the active window.

4. The installation process fails with a 1720 error if a custom destination folder, that does not previously exist, is specified and it has more than one level of folders to create.

5. Some cases of corrupted Minitab Project files cannot be opened without errors or missing content.

6. Tools > Options > General should include a checkbox to allow users to keep their preferred fonts instead of automatically substituting the user’s font selection with Minitab’s optimal fonts based on the current Windows regional settings.

7. If you save a project file with one or more control charts created with multiple models (same analysis created 2 or more graphs) and the graphs were not in an updated state when the project was saved, then opening the project and updating the graphs may result in a run-time error.

8. Points on a control chart may be incorrectly identified as being out of control if missing values are present in the data set or if data subset criteria are used.

9. After editing the text characteristics of a control limit or center line label on a control chart, the label value will not be recalculated when new data are added to the column and the graph is updated.

10. When individual observations with no historical covariance matrix are specified for a Tsquared Chart, the correct formulas are not used for the center line and upper control limit.

11. If a historical mean has been specified, the calculation of the standard deviation may be incorrect for applicable control charts and capability analyses.

12. A General Linear Model Analysis with an inappropriate model will cause Minitab to cease functioning if any non-default settings for residual plots have been selected in Tools > Options > Individual Graphs > Residual Plots.

13. For some cases, a General Linear Model analysis with multiple responses and a random factor will result in an assertion failure error.

14. The Response Optimizer checks the next to last value in the Factorial column instead of the last value when used with Analyze Variability.

15. Unicode characters may display incorrectly as nonsense characters, such as question marks or squares.

16. Specification limits do not appear on a Capability Analysis Sixpack graph.

17. For the Trial, Annual and e-Academy versions of Minitab, users may not be able to print graphs directly from the Graph window and Minitab may cease functioning.

18. Text containing Unicode characters may not be aligned correctly.

19. Some options in control chart dialog boxes may only be available if the arrows keys are used to scroll to them.

20. For a Time Series Decomposition analysis, the y scale on the Detrended Data portion of the Component Analysis for Data graph is incorrect.

21. Closing a project that contains a DDE link and then reopening it may produce an error and cause Minitab to cease functioning.

22. When using the Preview option while opening a text file (.txt) as a worksheet, only 1,000 rows of data are imported.

23. Graphs that are included in a layout may display different output than the original graphs.

24. An assertion failure may occur when closing graphs because a graphic preference from a prior release of Minitab was not imported correctly upon installation.

If you have questions about any of the issues resolved in Minitab Japanese 14.2, please contact Minitab Technical Support.