I like free...

[msmithma]

and hopefully so will my students. I remember the annoyances of plotting and fitting data in Origin and KaleidaGraph for all my lab reports and having to negotiate with the Mudd key server and eventually giving up and going down to the computer lab. The current pedagogy at Mudd favors KaleidaGraph and Excel for fitting and data manipulation

Comments

[tomstampy]

If it's upper division labs, do them all a favor and teach them to do it correctly now. Man i wish somebody had shoved it down my throat at Mudd.

Origin is used for publication quality plots and figures. Analysis should not be done in origin because it lacks repeatability and transparency. Also origin is shitty at analysis, so it's not even worth trying.

MATLAB (or similar) is used for data analysis and fitting. The history log allows you go back and see analysis (and also remember what the hell you really did after a late night of work).

Excel is used exclusively when the student is actually from CMC, and will probably go on to major in giving power-point presentations full of pie-charts to the board of their inherited company. :p

I don't know much about "free" unfortunately.

Free Matlab

[msmithma]

Octave is the free alternative, it works pretty well but I think the learning curve is a bit much for the frosh for either one.

Re: Free Matlab

[msmithma]

That too :)

[nuclear_eggset]

since when was excel even mediocre at fitting data?
I couldn't get excel to fit crap in physics lab; certain anything after freshman year.
it was always "data analysis in excel, then fitting in origin" (given that I never bothered to learn MatLab).

I think you misunderstood me

[msmithma]

Kaleidagraph is the fitting software they currently use (it's just like Origin). They use Excel to do the error propagation and other mass calculations using data.

Re: I think you misunderstood me

[nuclear_eggset]

ah, yes, I did misunderstand! I thought (with some hope) that perhaps there was some addon for Excel that actually could fit data. without either of the other two (I never bothered to use kaleidagraph... lazy?), I find my options for fitting data for hobbies... limited. (since I'm cheap) I may have to check out what you've found as free options.

(I do get people around work who actually do think you can use excel to fit data... hahahahaha silly sheeple!)

[pmb]

Gnuplot can do fitting to arbitrary functions, but Gnuplot sucks in its own special way.

[msmithma]

Dude I love gnuplot and I never knew it was that cool. I was hoping to find a pretty GUI fitting program but I'll have to squirrel that gem away for personal use.