NCES Kids’ Zone

NCES Kids’ Zone – A handy and simple way to create graphs and charts, obviously it’s not for very complex statistical analysis.

Resources of data visualising

Information visualisation is a general term that refers to using tables, graphs, maps, and even text, whether static or dynamic, to “provide some means to see what lies within, determine the answer to a question, find relations, and perhaps apprehend things which could not be seen so readily in other forms”.  Data visualisation is defined as “information which has been abstracted in some schematic form, including attributes or variables for the units of information.”  (Michael Friendly, 2009)

Andy Kirk provides a list of essential visualisation resources on his blog.

On the Improving Data Visualisation for the Public Sector Project webpage by the Department of Communities and Local Government and the Oxford Consultants for Social Inclusion (OCSI),  some useful resources also are recommended.

Social media analysis tools

Simply Measure is a social media analytics company. It helps marketers get social media data and create beautiful, custom reports in Excel and online.  Two free posts analysis tools provided by Simply Measure:

• Export.ly can export your Twitter friends & followers,  Facebook Fans, and emails with Google into EXCEL reports.
• RowFeeder makes social media monitoring and analysis easy with beautiful reports and analytics in Excel. It lets you track Tweets and Facebook posts in a spreadsheet.

Visibli

Visibli helps companies and content creators expand their digital audience, and promote their products through shared links. It is a free social media analytics tool that helps you to measure the usefulness of your tweets, blog posts and website resources.

Quantitative Data Analysis Tools

Quantitative Data Analysis Tools:

• CADStat is a menu-driven package of several data visualization and statistical methods. It is based on a Java Graphical User Interface to R. Methods in this package include: scatterplots, box plots, correlation analysis, linear regression, quantile regression, conditional probability analysis, and tools for predicting environmental conditions from biological observations.
• KNIME, the Konstanz Information Miner, is a user-friendly, coherent open source data analytics, reporting and integration platform. KNIME integrates various components for machine learning and data mining through its modular data pipelining concept.
• jHepWork is a free data-analysis framework for scientists, engineers and students written in Java. The program can be used everywhere where an analysis of large numerical data volumes, data mining, statistical data analysis and mathematics are essential. The program can be used in natural sciences, engineering, modeling and analysis of financial markets. It uses Jython, the Python language for the Java platform in order to call Java numerical and visualization libraries, which brings more power and simplicity for scientific computing.
• Minitab is the leading provider of software for statistics education and Lean, Six Sigma, and quality improvement projects. [Not free]
• Microsoft Excel
• PAW, Physics Analysis Workstation, is conceived as an instrument to assist physicists in the analysis and presentation of their data. It provides interactive graphical presentation and statistical or mathematical analysis, working on objects familiar to physicists like histograms, event files (Ntuples), vectors, etc.
• PSPP is a program for statistical analysis of sampled data. It is a Free replacement for the proprietary program SPSS, and appears very similar to it with a few exceptions.
• Q is a new data analysis program from Australia-based Numbers International that is designed to allow researchers to reveal hidden depths in their survey data using the power of statistical testing and modeling but without expecting researchers to become advanced statisticians. [Not free]
• R is a free software environment for statistical computing and graphics. It is a GNU project which is similar to the S language and environment which was developed at Bell Laboratories (formerly AT&T, now Lucent Technologies) by John Chambers and colleagues. It compiles and runs on a wide variety of UNIX platforms, Windows and MacOS. R provides a wide variety of statistical (linear and nonlinear modelling, classical statistical tests, time-series analysis, classification, clustering, …) and graphical techniques, and is highly extensible. The S language is often the vehicle of choice for research in statistical methodology, and R provides an Open Source route to participation in that activity.
• ROOT is an object-oriented program and library developed by CERN (The European Organization for Nuclear Research). It was originally designed for particle physics data analysis and contains several features specific to this field, but it is also used in other applications such as astronomy and data mining.
• SPSS (originally, Statistical Package for the Social Sciences) was released in its first version in 1968 after being developed by Norman H. Nie and C. Hadlai Hull. SPSS is among the most widely used programs for statistical analysis in social science. It is “SPSS: An IBM Company” since July 2009. [not free]

Resources:

• A list of Statistical packages from Wikipedia.
• Bioinformatics Software – Quantitative Image Analysis Tools  from TMH Research Institute, Center for Bioengineering and Informatics.
• Comparison of statistical packages from Wikipedia.
• Free Statistical Software from Free Statistics
• StatSci.org  is a web resource particular focusing on Australia statistical science and bioinformatics. Statistical Packages page lists many quantitative analysis software.

Web Statistics

FindWebStats helps you to find Website Traffic Statistics, Page Rank, Whois, website value, host information etc.

I tried to search Google, Blackboard, the university website, my blogs and a university VLE system. It works, but want to know how precise it is.

Then I found other tools:

Alexa allows you to learn how popular a site is, to find new sites, to learn who owns a site, and so on. The popular Alexa Rank is used as an estimate to determine how many websites do exist in World Wide Web today.

BlogPulse applies machine-learning and natural-language processing techniques to discover trends in the highly dynamic world of blogs.

Compete is a web traffic analysis tool that is operational in United States and has around 1 million websites in its repository. It is of great help to the online marketers.

Google Analytics you may recongnise it already.

Quantcast’s free measurement service for web site owners provides detailed reports for traffic data and deep audience insights at any level of content, including webpages, widgets, blogs, videos, networks and games.
(blogs and university VLE system cannot be analysied, has to be US based?)

Opentracker specialises in tracking and website analytics for businesses that are serious about understanding online customers.

popuri.us is a tool to check at-a-glance the link popularity of any site based on its ranking (Google PageRank, Alexa Rank, Technorati etc.), social bookmarks (del.icio.us, etc), subscribers (Bloglines, etc) and more. It shows you BackLinks where you may find some same-interest resources!

Server Insiders.com gives detailed review and analysis of at least the top domains on the Internet. Currently they are analysing over 1 million domains.

StatCounter is a free, online visitor stats tool.  Similar to Google Analytics, you need to create an account and create a project first.

The DomainHound website lists more web statistics tools.

Yahoo Site Explorer allows you to explore all the web pages indexed by Yahoo! Search.

ValueTheWebsite is one of outstanding web analytic tools on the internet today. You can use it for FREE. More than website value calculation, ValueTheWebsite contains a collection of useful features such as checking Compete and Alexa Traffic Rank, Server IP and Location on Google Map, DMOZ and Yahoo Directory Listings and more.

WebsiteOutlook helps to evaluate any website. I put my blog in, it gives the blog’s value immediately.