The (Data) Plot Thickens

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You’ve generated a ton of data. How do you analyze it and present it? Sure, you can use a spreadsheet. Or break out some programming tools. Or try LabPlot. Sure, it is sort of like a spreadsheet. But it does more. It has object management features, worksheets like a Juypter notebook, and a software development kit, in case it doesn’t do what you want out of the box.The program is made to deal with very large data sets. There are tons of output options, including the usual line plots, histograms, and more exotic things like Q-Q plots. You can have hierarchies of spreadsheets (for example, a child spreadsheet can compute statistics about a parent spreadsheet). There are tons of regression analysis tools, likelihood estimation, and numerical integration and differentiation built in.Fourier transforms and filters? Of course. The title graphic shows the program pulling SOS out of the noise using signal processing techniques. It also works as a front end for programs ranging from Python and Julia, to Scilab and Octave, to name a few. If you insist, it can read Jupyter projects, too. A lot of features? That’s not even a start. For example, you can input an image file of a plot and extract data from it. It is an impressive piece of software.A good way to get the flavor of it is to watch one of the many videos on the YouTube channel (you can see one below). Or, since you can download it for Windows, Mac, Linux, FreeBSD, or Haiku, just grab it and try it out.If you’ve been putting off Jupyter notebooks, this might be your excuse to skip them. If you think spreadsheets are just fine for processing signals and other big sets, you aren’t wrong. But it sure is hard.