Setup for Lesson

Data for Spreadsheets Lesson

The data used in this lesson comes from a project observing a small mammal community in southern Arizona, US. This is part of a project studying the effects of rodents and ants on the plant community that has been running for almost 40 years. The rodents are sampled on a series of 24 plots, with different experimental manipulations controlling which rodents are allowed to access which plots. This is a real dataset that has been used in over 100 publications. It is published at Ecological Archives and can be found on Portal Project Database. This data is open and free to use for research purposes.

For the purposes of training, this data has been simplified a bit (you can still download the full dataset and work with it using exactly the same tools we will learn here). This simplified version of data is available from the Portal Project Teaching Dataset. In this lesson, you will need to download the following five files from the Portal Project Teaching Dataset:

• messy_survey_data.xls - this is the main file we will work with. It includes messy survey data (in Excel’s .xlsx format) that you will clean during the lesson and use to learn some best practices in data organisation.

Install Microsoft Excel

Microsoft Excel is commonly provided by most institutions with the Microsoft Office suite via an instututional licence. On Windows and MacOS, Microsoft Excel can be downloaded using the Microsoft Store and the App Store respectively. On Linux, you may use Microsoft Excel in a web browser. This is not reccomended and we suggest you use an alterntive such as LibreOffice instead. If you do not have access to a Microsoft Office licence, please use an alternative such as LibreOffice.

Install LibreOffice

In the lesson, Microsoft Excel is used as the spreadsheet software of choice. An alternative spreadsheet software to Microsoft Excel is LibreOffice Calc. There will be some commands and formatting options which differ between Calc and Excel, but the general workflow and ideas for thinking about data organisation in spreadsheets are the same.

Windows

• Download the Installer
  • Install LibreOffice by going to the installation page. The version for Windows should automatically be selected. Click Download Version X.X.X (whichever is the most recent version). You will go to a page that asks about a donation, but you do not need to make one. Your download should begin automatically.
• Once the installer is downloaded, double click on it and an installer for LibreOffice will launch. The default options are fine.

MacOS

• Download the Installer
  • Install LibreOffice by going to the installation page. The version for MacOS should automatically be selected, however you may need to switch to the Apple Silicon version. Click Download Version X.X.X (whichever is the most recent version). You will go to a page that asks about a donation, but you do not need to make one. Your download should begin automatically.
• Once the installer is downloaded, double click on it and drag LibreOffice.app into the Applications folder.

Linux

• Download the Installer
  • Install LibreOffice by going to the installation page. The version for Linux should automatically be selected. Click Download Version X.X.X (whichever is the most recent version). You will go to a page that asks about a donation, but you do not need to make one. Your download should begin automatically.
• Install LibreOffice using the file you downloaded.