Laboratory withdrawal symptoms – Data analysis

Lockdown has meant that we’re not doing as much lab work as expected. This also means that we have fewer results to play with and present. The consequences of this can be various.

Have you found yourself wanting to make a slideshow presentation of something? Even if it is sorting out holiday photographs and reminiscing about those great times with friends and family? Have you found yourself looking up statistics, like populations of cities and countries and working out proportions and concentrations of infected populations? Some of you may have taken it further into various explorations of R-values. Have you started creating a shopping list in a spreadsheet? Don’t worry! These are normal symptoms for scientists suffering lab withdrawal. 

Generally, people are talking about doing a lot of life sorting. This can also apply to work sorting. If you can’t get into the lab, it is a good opportunity to get to know your analysis software a bit better.  This could be a case of getting to know the reporting functions in your software and understanding how you can design the report to work better for you. This is a kind of task for which you don’t often have time when you are busy with a continuous feed of results. Maybe now is the time to work out how to get the right default settings so that the data automatically appears in a format that suits your flow.

Software developers do understand that their customers have different ways of working, and where possible do try to incorporate some choices in reports. In addition to the help files embedded in analysis software, some webinars are also educational, especially those that are presented to highlight the features of software. These can be worth a look and are available ‘on demand’ on our website.

There is also an array of documents and technical notes on our website. Some of them address best practice in data analysis. There might be something that leads you to think differently about how you are collecting or analyzing your data.

At Malvern Panalytical we want you to be happy with the way your data are handled. Don’t be afraid to look for hints and tips on our website. If you can’t find the answers you need, or you need help getting a homeworking software license do contact us!