This question is mainly aimed at those studying in medical/biological sciences, and probably also those in other branches of science too. I'm currently trying to create graphs out of my first set of data, and I was wondering what packages people use for this. We've had a week of tutoring on SPSS, mainly on stats though, and I still find it very hard to use. Additionally, no one I know in my area seems to use it - the preferences seem to be either Excel or GraphPad Prism, which I don't have access to. I'm comfortable using Excel, but some people seem to look down on it and claim it's not powerful enough. Is this true? Should I struggle along with SPSS, or use Excel?

Hi 4matt.

I'm not in the sciences but have been trained to use SPSS and the like since day 1 of uni. You don't have to use SPSS to make graphs. If you're more comfortable with Excel, and it does what you need it to do, then I'd say use that.

If you don't have access to Excel, and need to use SPSS, I can send you a guide which takes you through everything (skip through to the graphs bit).

Good luck.

Hiya,

I just started using graphpad and it's really easy and makes nice graphs. You can download free trial versions for one month. When it runs out you can just re-install it over and over. That's what I do at the moment.