Beyond the Spreadsheet
We all know and love our spreadsheets and they can be powerful tools for simple data analysis. Being able to quickly create charts and pivot tables as well as do some fancy statistics is also expected and useful.
But what if you need to cluster the data in various ways and calculate the statistics / draw a chart for each of these clusters? What if you want to try a variety of clustering approaches to see if you can spot an interesting pattern?
In this scenario, using a spreadsheet may involve multiple manual steps which limits time (and enthusiasm) for such experimentation.
SimpleCube offers a more automated approach to creating summaries and charts from clusters of data and it is incredibly easy to filter out certain parts, change the clustering, change the summary formula and explore patterns.
The Grid display is particularly useful in spotting patterns within data and the vast number of types of data manipulation and filtering combine with a drag & drop interface to make is almost instantaneous to try a variety of scenarios and determine if a pattern is evident.
Charts can have trend lines fitted automatically and statistics can be linked to the same data as the chart. Thus, we could cluster figures such as blood glucose levels by age group and explore the relationship between glucose level and BMI. Link that grid to a chart to get a plot of the data for each age group and also link it to a statistics window to calculate the regression coefficients for each chart. All this can then be exported to a Spreadsheet format if desired.
I use SimpleCube extensively for simple "what if" examination of clustering and the Filter wizard is very useful for creating frequency tables and charts if the number of items is more useful than the sum or average.
Please try a demo version (or get a copy of the PDF version of the help file) and see if it can help your data analysis needs.
Version 4 Released! (click for more information)
This version brings a major extra feature of user designed reporting to the Dashboard functionality. Now, as well as exporting charts, grids and statistics to spreadsheet format, we can combine them in a printable report along with the underlying data. As the report rests on a Dashboard, the filtering components can determine what data is shown and the dashboard + reporting can be distributed to users who only need the free viewer program rather than the full software.
Other improvements have been made to the Calculated fields, Statistics module and Dashboard filtering components.
This update is also Windows 10 compatible (earlier versions would only run on Windows 10 if installed in a directory other than the c:\Program Files)
