CoStat's Data Handling Procedures

CoStat has a wide range of easy-to-use procedures for manipulating the data.

The procedures on the Edit menu let you manipulate the rows and columns of the data file in various ways. For example:

• Copy Rows and Copy Columns copy a range of rows or columns.
• Delete Rows and Delete Columns delete a range of rows and columns from the data file.
• Find finds specific values in the data file based on a boolean equation that you specify.
• Go To goes to a specific row and column of the data file based on a boolean equation that you specify.
• Insert Rows and Insert Columns insert rows and columns in the data file.
• Format lets you specify how you want the data in one of the columns displayed. For example, you can display values in various Date, Time, or Degrees formats. You can also change the column name and the width of the column.
• Keep If makes a subset of the datafile based on a boolean equation which you specify. The equation is applied to each row of the datafile. If the equation evaluates to True for a given row, that row is kept; other rows are deleted.
• Move Rows and Move Columns move a range of rows or columns.
• Rank inserts a new column and fills it with the ranking of each row (based on the key columns that you specify).
• The six Rearrange procedures completely rearrange the data in the data file in various ways (for example, for transposing the array).
• Sort sorts the rows of the data file based on the key columns that you specify.

The procedures on the Transformations menu let you change the values in one of the columns in the data file. For example,

• Accumulate replaces the original numeric data in a column with the cumulative total of the data.
• Grid uses the data from three columns (containing scattered x,y,z values) and creates three new columns with gridded data (interpolated z values for each point on a grid). This is useful for many types of data representations in CoPlot.
• Interpolate starts with two columns of numeric data (representing x and y), and creates two new numeric x,y columns with many more points, calculated by interpolation.
• Transform and If Then Else transform the values in a column of the data file based on an equation that you specify. The equations are applied to the datafile row by row.
• Regular fills a column with regularly spaced numeric values, based on the From, To and Increment values that you specify.
• Round rounds floating point data to some number of digits to the right of the decimal point.
• Smooth replaces the numeric values in a column with a moving average (you can specify the weights used for averaging the data).
• Unaccumulate replaces the original numeric data in a column with the difference between a given value and the one above it.