Emily Jane asked a good question about what are the other options, aside from Excel, Libre Office, or text editors as a means for data entry.
Forms, whose output can later be accessed as tabular data (e.g., CSV), are a solution I have used and liked. Proprietary database software, such as Filemaker Pro exists, and from my experience, is fairly user friendly. For open source options, I would use Google forms, or if you want an option that doesn’t have to be hosted on the web, you could try out Dean Attali’s shinyforms R package (works, but is still under development) [1]. I especially like forms for data entry, as you can more easily constrain how the data gets entered (predefined columns, drop-down menus with limited options, etc), compared to the free-for-all that exists with a spreadsheet. I’d love to hear other’s favourite tools and opinions on this topic. Cheers, Tiffany [1] https://github.com/daattali/shinyforms <https://github.com/daattali/shinyforms> Tiffany Timbers [email protected] > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 4 > Date: Fri, 26 Aug 2016 15:02:06 -0700 > From: Emily Jane McTavish <[email protected]> > To: Software Carpentry Discussion > <[email protected]> > Subject: Re: [Discuss] Excel errors.... > Message-ID: <[email protected]> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed > > Great points. > > I have a question about alternatives to excel for data input. > > Following this paper I have seen a lot of 'never use Excel' tweets, but > that seems to be ignoring a key step in real world data analysis > pipelines. If data is not coming straight off a machine, such as in > ecological surveys, behavioral experiments, meta-analyses of gene names, > etc., those data need to be put into a tabular, machine readable, format > (e.g. CSV) somehow. I don't think anyone is recommending using a text > editor to do that. > Libre office calc and google sheets have many of the same autoformat > issues as Excel. (although that may be fixed in new versions of libre > office?) > > I think when people say 'don't use excel', they often mean 'for > analysis', or 'for statistics'. But this paper demonstrates it is > problematic for even simple data input. I know what to recommend as > alternatives in the former cases, but not for the latter. Am I missing > good alternative options here? > > > Thanks, > Emily Jane > > -- > Emily Jane McTavish > Assistant Professor > School of Natural Sciences > University of California, Merced > 5200 N. Lake Rd, Merced CA 95343 > [email protected], [email protected] > > > > > On 08/26/2016 02:42 PM, Steven Haddock wrote: >> I was going to post that article too, but I dug into it (read the paper), >> and it is really just conversion of gene names (like SEPT5) in supplementary >> files. That was reported long ago as affecting some quantifications, but I >> would call it analytical errors as we have seen in the past. A bit of a >> tempest in a teapot, perhaps. >> >> Ironic twist, the paper provides a supplementary file listing all the >> gene-name errors they found, posted as an Excel file. >> >> -Steve >> >>> On Aug 26, 2016, at 14:26 , Maxime Boissonneault >>> <[email protected]> wrote: >>> >>> Hi everyone, >>> Some interesting content to use about how to not do science correctly with >>> a computer.... >>> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/08/26/an-alarming-number-of-scientific-papers-contain-excel-errors/ >>> >>> >>> Maxime Boissonneault >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Discuss mailing list >>> [email protected] >>> http://lists.software-carpentry.org/listinfo/discuss >> _______________________________________________ >> Discuss mailing list >> [email protected] >> http://lists.software-carpentry.org/listinfo/discuss > > > > ------------------------------ > > Subject: Digest Footer > > _______________________________________________ > Discuss mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.software-carpentry.org/listinfo/discuss > > ------------------------------ > > End of Discuss Digest, Vol 37, Issue 19 > ***************************************
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