Data-Intensive Research: Data Analysis & Visualization

Explore the tools and resources on this page to find new ways of both understanding and presenting your data. Many of the tools and resources here are open source, but some need to be purchased after various trial periods.

Contact your librarian for help developing customized visualizations or finding additional resources and guides for these tools.

Data-Preprocessing

• Open Refine Free data pre-processing tool to clean up messy data
• Tabula Free tool that allows you to extract data tables from PDFs into CSV format

Data Analysis & Visualization

• WCM Library Scientific Software Hub Here you can find information and access to all the software that is licensed to Weill Cornell Medicine faculty, staff and students, or is freely available
• Power BI Power data visualization from Microsoft
• CU IT Available Software
• CISER Computing Accounts Apply for remote access to use statistical software and other applications on the research servers from your computer. Service provided by the Cornell Institute for Social and Economic Research.
• R Free environment for statistical computing and graphics using the language, R. Available for Windows, Mac, and UNIX platforms. Condiser also installing R Studio. Check out the R and Data Mining LibGuide for more help with R 
• Python Programming language for analysis and other applications that lets you work quickly and integrate systems effectively. See also the Anaconda Distribution of Python for access to extras like the iPython Notebook
• SPSS Software package used for statistical analysis and predictive analytics.
• Stata General use statistical software package
• SAS Integrated system of software products focused on analytics. Periodically available in the Library Computer Lab when courses using the software are being taught in the Computer Lab
• ArcGIS Geographic Inforation System (GIS) for working with maps and geographic data.
• WEKA Free machine learning algorithm suite for data mining tasks. The algorithms can either be applied directly to a dataset or called from your own Java code. Developed by the University of Waikato
• D3.js  Open source JavaScript library for manipulating documents based on data.
• Tableau Family of interactive data visualization products with free one month trials available. Tableau Public is freely available. Tableau On Demand Training and Tutorials are available to demonstrate different aspects of the Tableau interface.
• Google Fusion Tables Quick data charting and mapping interface. Includes geographic information system (GIS) functions to analyze data by geography. Great tool for beginners to get comfortable with analyzing data. For more advanced users, there's an API.
• Sci² A modular toolset designed for the study of science. It supports temporal, geospatial, topical, and network analysis and visualization of datasets at individual, local, and global levels.
• Gephi Open source graph visualization and manipulation software

Data Analysis

• General Analysis
  • Guide to Resources for Data Analysis This helpful guide provided by Northwestern University lists resources for data analysis organized software package and level of proficiency.
  • Data Analysis With Open Source Tools Book discussing how to effectively approach data analysis problems, and how to extract all of the available information from your data. Focuses on open source tools and resources.
  • Open Intro Statistics Freely available online textbook
  • Handbook of Statistical Analysis and Data Mining Applications
  • Data Analysis Examples from the UCLA Institute for Digital Research and Education. Examples use Stata, SAS, SPSS, MPlus, and R
• R Specific Resources- See the R & Data Mining Guide
  • RFUN Comprehensive, easy-to-follow tutorials
• SAS Specific Resources
  • SAS Starter Kit Resources provided by UCLA
•  SPSS Specific Resources 
  • IBM SPSS Tutorials Tutorials and case study examples to walk you through how to work with SPSS
  • Learning SPSS Guide Resources provided by the Institute for Digital Research and Education at UCLA

Data Visualization 

• Now you see it: Simple visualization techniques for quantitative analysis by Stephen Few.  Teaches simple, practical means to explore and analyze quantitative data--techniques that rely primarily on using your eyes
• Show me the numbers: Designing tables and graphs to enlighten by Stephen Few. Teaches the importance of careful and effective presentation of data.
• FlowingData Tutorials Data visualization tutorials developed by Nathan Yau
• The Periodic Table of Visualization Methods An interactive guide to data visualization methods
• Tableau Guide to Beginners Data Visualization

The following links are located in every tab of this guide in the right-hand column for your convenience.

• DMP Tool Creating data management plans
• Research Data Management Services Group Resources and services at Cornell for data management
• REDCap HIPAA compliant data collection 
• Architecture for Research Computing in Health (ARCH) Secondary use of EHR data
• WCM Data Core Secure, scalable computing and storage environment
• WCM Applied Bioinformatics Core Computational resources, data lifecycle management and bioinformatics consulting 

CISER Workshops Downloadable computing workshops provided by the Cornell Institute for Social and Economic Research

Data Analysis Free online course periodically offered through Coursera.org. Instruction by Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

These are just a few examples of innovative ways of looking at data.

D3.js Interactive Data Visualization Examples

Census Visualizations Gallery of visualizations using US Census data.