Two great tastes that taste great together

I don’t usually blog about very techie research stuff, but this little tool has basically transformed my life as a scientist. (For those if you interested in downloading it, you want the RAndFriends package, which is free.)

In a nutshell, this package of Excel utilities makes it possible to run code from the statistical package R from within Excel. (Excel is, of course, not free.)

Those of you who are wondering what a “statistical package” is can spare yourself the rest of this post, of course.

For those of you who do know, and care, it means that you can (and we can!) compute all kinds of high level statistical analyses–including things like principal components, logistic regression, and even epistemic network analysis–in a simple Excel spreadsheet.

Why does that matter? Well, it means that it is possible to compute ENA statistics directly from raw data–including, ultimately, graphical visualizations–without ever leaving Excel. We’re also using it on the AutoMentor project to develop algorithms for automated coding.

Yes, it is that powerful. (Though I do shudder to think what would happen if this fell into the wrong hands.)

It will probably take us a little while to get templates for ENA up in a format that is easy to use, but for those of you who can’t wait, the package is definitely worth checking out.

And for a hard-core, high-end Excel junkie like me, it is heaven.

(Now, where did those last three weeks go???)