Hi Caroline,While I also encourage people to move away from spreadsheets where possible, you can accomplish some of what Ethan suggests by using "Data Validation" within the spreadsheet. This allows you to restrict certain ranges (e.g. columns) to meet certain requirements including limiting to numbers and limiting to one of a set of defined strings, among others.
See here, for example: http://www.contextures.com/xlDataVal01.htmlMaking a change to using a data base will probably provide other benefits over the long term, but this might provide some of the additional quality you want in the short term.
Most importantly (!), if the data already exists in some computer-readable form, it is probably best to automate its migration into the data table you want using a script that is repeatable and testable - whether a database or a spreadsheet - rather than rely on human data entry into either of those.
Paul On 02/02/2015 02:07 PM, Caroline Li wrote:
Thanks! I have MS Access and will check it out.On Mon, Feb 2, 2015 at 2:56 PM, Ethan White <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:On Mon, Feb 2, 2015 at 12:39 PM, Caroline Li <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: I've heard that entering data manually into spreadsheets (which I've always done) is frowned upon. Is there free software available for data entry? Apparently some people use Google Forms, but maybe there's an option better geared to scientific data? I prefer entering data via a database management system because they can be configured to offer a lot of quality control to prevent bad data from being entered. We have tended to use MS Access, but there is an open source equivalent in Libre Office Base. Any data entry into a database management system will at least enforce types (you can't accidentally enter a letter when it should be a number) and will force the data to be properly structured. By doing data entry through "forms" you can make entry easier and more robust. For example, instead of typing in a species name you could have the user select it from a drop down (no more typos) and if a value is logically bounded between 0 and 100 you could prevent it from taking other values. _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.software-carpentry.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss_lists.software-carpentry.org
-- -- ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ -- Paul Wilson ~ UW-Madison ~ 608-263-0807 ~ cal: http://bit.ly/pphw-cal Professor, Engineering Physics. ~ http://cnerg.engr.wisc.edu Faculty Director, Advanced Computing Infrastructure ~ http://aci.wisc.edu
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