He started working on a data visualization tool called , an acronym for "John's Macintosh Project."

The software took off with the release of a Windows version in 1994. Out of 250,000 users, most run JMP on Windows, followed by the Mac and a small number on Linux.

Its users are primarily research scientists and engineers, as well as manufacturing experts following the They use JMP to design and record data from experiments, or keep quality control statistics.

For instance, most leading semiconductor vendors have long used JMP to help them improve chip yields, said Sall, though he declined to name any of them apart from National Semiconductor Corp.

Unlike most similar software that are aimed at helping statisticians display and confirm known trends, JMP is what Sall calls a "discovery" tool that helps researchers see and interpret anomalies.