Aabel Review – Scientific Plotting and Data Analysis Software

Business graphing programs or spreadsheet programs like Excel are good for simple graphs, but nothing more after that. Graphing/plotting software are specialised programs used to explore and present data. Windows have programs like Origin or SigmaPlot. The Mac has similar graphing/plotting programs too, which include DeltaGraph, Kaliedagraph, Igor Pro, ChartSmith, pro Fit and Aabel.

Just like Origin and SigmaPlot, Aabel is a powerful graphing/charting program that offers statistical analysis, plotting/graphing, and curve fitting. To quote Aabel’s documentation, it’s designed for “statistical analysis with a focus on visualization, dynamic data exploration, powerful data management, and interactive scientific graphing.”

aabel scientific statistical charting graphing software screenshot

Data Import

In Aabel, you can import a variety of different data formats including but not limited to: delimited ASCII (space, tab, comma etc), FORTRAN, Excel, binary formats (8, 16, 32, 64 Bit Data), dBase (.dbf), Matlab, and even Splus 2-column ASCII. You have a number of options to customise the import, and you also get a preview of the data to be imported, so you can import data with column headings in the first row with no problems.

With a data set of 1000 rows with 50 columns, the data import was done in a second on a MacBook Pro. Each of your variables is automatically assigned a data type, which can be modified by clicking on the dropdown menu at the top of each column. Clicking on the control button at the top of each column will show you a summary of the data that comes with a histogram, allowing you to quickly look at the distribution of data. You can change bin sizes with a slider when you click on a column, except in the case of a column of categorical data. You can also choose to limit the range to elimnate outlying, erroneous data, and Aabel also allows you to add units to the data.

aabel scientific statistical charting graphing software screenshot

Chart & Graph Flexibility

Aabel offers a wide range of scientific, geographic, mapping and technical graph/plot types that include: bar, pie, scatter, statisical box and wisker, histogram, contour. In Aabel, multivariate data can be explored very easily because it allows you to flip through different variable combinations in the side palette, and Aabel will update the plot automatically. Similarly, for 3D, contour, or histogram plots, the side palette in Aabel offers the ability to dynamically change the number of bins, and their size ranges.

Aabel also allows clicking, brushing, selecting in plot, and customising of the point markers. You can change the visibility (for filtering), style of marker, colour, and labeling options. This works well to allow easy identification of points and general data exploration. Of course, Aabel also offers several drawing and annotation tools, which include text boxes, lines, rectangles, ellipses, and so on.

Plot Formatting

Unlike many other graphing/plotting programs, Aabel does not bring up new plots in an individual window. Instead, Aabel uses a page-layout approach, that makes it easy to add multiple plots to the same window. On the other hand, this makes the default plot sizes look slightly small. However, enlarging a plot is easy, and can be done by stretching the plot using the pointer tool, just like how you would do it in a program like Photoshop, Illustrator, Keynote, or PowerPoint.

aabel scientific statistical charting graphing software screenshot

You will have no lack of plot customization options and professional-quality scientific graphics with Aabel. To use your graphics, you can choose to export them to PDF format, which allows use in many Mac programs such as Keynote or Pages.

Statistical Analysis

Aabel is a scientific plotting program, and so naturally comes with features such as error bars, curve fitting, and statistical analysis. With normal regression, you can perform linear, polynomial, and other typical regression techniques.

aabel scientific statistical charting graphing software screenshot

Alternatively, you can also perform a customized regression, e.g. for a custom user-defined function. This allows a wide range of various techniques, and also gives you the ability to write a custom functional fit. One feature that Aabel offers that other program do not offer, is the option to include confidence/error bars for a linear regression itself. In addition, you can also use the Statistical Analyzer mode and get a wide range of statistical analysis, including regression techniques.

In Conclusion

In conclusion, Aabel produces absolutely stunning graphs, charts, and plots. But on top of just appearing pretty, Aabel also provides an indispensible array of data exploration, scientific plotting, and statistical analysis tools. The degree of interactivity gained Aabel’s interface makes analysing correlations in multivariate data a breeze.

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