Data Carpentry Spreadsheets for Ecology

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Data Carpentry's aim is to teach researchers basic concepts, skills, and tools for working with data so that they can get more done in less time, and with less pain. The lessons below were designed for those interested in working with Ecology data in Spreadsheets.

Content Contributors: Christie Bahlai, Aleksandra Pawlik, Jennifer Bryan, Alexander Duryee, Jeffrey Hollister, Daisie Huang, Owen Jones, Ben Marwick, Tracy Teal

Lesson Maintainers: Aleksandra Pawlik, Tracy Teal

Lesson status: Teaching

Instructors

See Instructor notes on how to teach this lesson.

Lessons:

  1. Introduction
  2. Formatting data
  3. Common formatting problems
  4. Dates as data
  5. Quality control
  6. Exporting data
  7. Data Format Caveats

Data

Data files for the lesson are available here: https://github.com/iDigBio/2015-09-23-TDWG-spreadsheet-ecology-lesson/raw/gh-pages/data/biology/surveydatatabs.xls

Requirements

Data Carpentry's teaching is hands-on, so participants are encouraged to use their own computers to insure the proper setup of tools for an efficient workflow. These lessons assume no prior knowledge of the skills or tools, but working through this lesson requires working copies of the software described below. To most effectively use these materials, please make sure to install everything before working through this lesson.

Spreadsheets

Spreadsheets are useful for data entry and data organization, and some subsetting and sorting of the data as well as getting an overview of the data. To interact with spreadsheets, we can use LibreOffice, Microsoft Excel, Gnumeric, OpenOffice.org, or other programs. Commands may differ a bit between programs, but general ideas for thinking about spreadsheets is the same.

For this lesson, if you don't have a spreadsheet program already, you can use LibreOffice. It's a free, open source spreadsheet program.

Windows

  • Download the Installer
    Install LibreOffice by going to the installation page. The version for Windows should automatically be selected. Click Download Version 4.4.2. You will go to a page that asks about a donation, but you don't need to make one. Your download should begin automatically.
  • Install LibreOffice
    Once the installer is downloaded, double click on it and it should install.

Mac OS X

  • Download the Installer
    Install LibreOffice by going to the installation page. The version for Mac OS X should automatically be selected. Click Download Version 4.4.2. You will go to a page that asks about a donation, but you don't need to make one. Your download should begin automatically.
  • Install LibreOffice
    The file LibreOffice_4.4.2_MacOS_x86-64 should have been downloaded. Double click on this file, and LibreOffice will be installed.

Linux

  • Download the Installer
    Install LibreOffice by going to the installation page. The version for Linux should automatically be selected. Click Download Version 4.4.2. You will go to a page that asks about a donation, but you don't need to make one. Your download should begin automatically.
  • Install LibreOffice
    Once the installer is downloaded, double click on it and it shou\ ld install.

Twitter: @datacarpentry