StratumWhat's New in Stratum 1.1
Our first update since launch adds two new Pro analyses, a new way to draw scatter plots, categorical ordering that finally respects days and months, richer distribution summaries, and a sidebar you can rearrange — and drag straight out to export.
Stratum 1.1 is here, and it's a free update for everyone. It's the first release since launch, and it's shaped almost entirely by what people asked for in the weeks after: two new analyses on the Pro tier, a handful of charting and data-handling refinements, and a round of bug fixes. If Stratum is already installed, Check for Updates… will offer it; new users get it in the current download. Here's the tour.
Two new analyses (Pro)
The headline additions are two techniques that fill real gaps in the toolkit — one for categorical data, one for measured processes.
Correspondence Analysis
Correspondence Analysis is, in spirit, PCA for a contingency table. Give it two categorical variables and it turns the cross-tabulation into a two-dimensional map, so the rows and columns that tend to occur together sit near each other. It's the fastest way to see the structure in survey responses, brand-attribute grids, or any "which category goes with which" question that a raw cross-tab makes you squint at.
Stratum gives you the full report — inertia, dimension contributions, row and column coordinates — alongside the symmetric biplot, and the map is a first-class chart with the same live controls and PNG/PDF export as everything else. If you've read our Star Wars survey case study, that's Correspondence Analysis at work; it also pairs naturally with what you already know from PCA.
Process Capability
Process Capability answers the manufacturing-floor question control charts can't: not just "is the process stable?" but "is it capable of meeting spec?" Enter your lower and upper specification limits and Stratum computes the whole family — Cp, Cpk, Pp, Ppk, and estimated PPM defective — and draws a capability histogram with the spec limits and the fitted distribution overlaid, so you can read the margin at a glance.
Connected Scatter
Scatter plots gain a Connect Points option that joins the markers in order, turning a cloud of points into a trajectory. Order the points by time and a scatter of GDP against life expectancy becomes a country's path across decades — the same technique behind our Gapminder trajectories post. It's a small toggle that unlocks a genuinely different kind of chart.
Categorical ordering that respects reality
Text columns no longer have to sort alphabetically. You can now assign a custom order to a categorical column — from the Data menu or the Navigator — so Mon, Tue, Wed… and Jan, Feb, Mar… finally appear in the order they belong rather than Apr, Aug, Dec…. The order you set follows the column everywhere it's used: axis labels, group order in charts, table rows, and every analysis. It's the kind of fix you only notice when it's finally gone.
Richer distribution summaries
Box-Whisker, Histogram, and Violin charts now report skewness and kurtosis alongside the usual center-and-spread statistics. Together they tell you what the mean and standard deviation can't — which way a distribution leans, and how heavy its tails are — without leaving the chart you're already looking at.
A sidebar you can rearrange — and drag out to export
The left sidebar of cards is now yours to organize. Drag to reorder your charts and analyses into whatever sequence tells the story, and right-click to rename any card. Best of all, you can drag a card straight out of Stratum — onto the desktop or into any Finder folder — to export that chart or analysis as an image on the spot. No export dialog, no round trip; just grab it and drop it where you need it.
.stratum document, and nothing leaves your machine.
How to get it
Stratum 1.1 is a free update. Existing users: choose Stratum ▸ Check for Updates… and the in-app updater will take it from there. New to Stratum? The download is already on 1.1, and the free 25-lesson tutorial is the fastest way in. Correspondence Analysis and Process Capability are part of the Pro tier; everything else here is in every copy.