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Re: [apple scitech] Cross-platform database/data analysis suggestions?
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Re: [apple scitech] Cross-platform database/data analysis suggestions?



Hi David,

PLEASE keep in mind that none of the people involved are programmers or computer geeks. They're scientists with specialties in other areas -- I'm still the one who solves most of my father's computer problems, for example. The person who does the VBA programming probably could handle something equivalent at that level, but I think whatever I suggest can't reach much beyond that level of demand.

you didn't really mention what kind of data you intend to process.

I'm guessing it's more or less numerical data, which would mean that Excel has never been the best tool to do it. Depending on the kind of 'macro-processing' that you need (mathematical/statistical analysis or more the text processing kind?), these are the three paths that I would suggest looking into:

a) Python with scipy/numpy - Python is really easy to learn, offers a large variety of mathematical as well as text-processing methods. It is however nothing that carries its own GUI. You could look into ipython, which is basically a Python interpreter with some GUI on top of it. Idea is to write data to files, push it through Python scripts -> voila, final data. However this means non-interactive work.

b) Matlab - The expensive but wide-spread way to process numerical data. Has extensive GUI, online documentation and drawing/plotting facilities.

c) GNU R / SPSS / Origin - If you're more or less into statistical analysis, these are the tools to go for. Scientific tools, though.

http://www.python.org
http://www.scipy.org
http://www.mathworks.com
http://www.r-project.org/

Yours,
Mark
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 >[apple scitech] Cross-platform database/data analysis suggestions? (From: david craig <email@hidden>)



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