This course uses Excel heavily as a tool for demonstrating numerical manipulations. Excel is powerful and can do essentially everything that one would need. However, the poor quality of the graphics and difficulty of syntax make Excel are obstacles for many users. Several competing scientific software packages have been developed. The most common of these are Igor and Origin. They are both similar in their capabilties and the choice is really a matter of taste and convenience.
Data entry into an analysis program is an important step. Both Igor and Excel provide two general methods.
1. Read the data in from a file using various formats to determine how many data columns are available to be read.
2. Copy and paste the data into a spreadsheet. Igor has a spreadsheet that is visible as soon as the program is opened.
Fitting data
Both linear regression and non-linear fitting are available in Igor. Unlike Excel, Igor comes with a number of functions pre-coded so that in favoable cases data can be fit without having to write a macro. However, Igor macros are not hard to write. A few templates are provided. These templates include the Michaelis-Menten function, multiple Gaussians and multiple exponentials all of which are commonly used fitting functions.
Igor Macros
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