Article: A cunning plot

Produce the graphs you really want, and use them to really analyse your data, with a professional, dedicated graphing program which accesses your data seamlessly. And produce them quicker too! NEIL CHAPMAN looks at Axum 7.

You know the feeling: you’re looking at that graph you’ve just produced using your spreadsheet, and you’re thinking, “well, I guess it’ll do.” It took you a lot longer to create the graph than you’d hoped, and it’s not really exactly what you’d hoped for either. But be fair: producing a graph is something of a secondary function of a spreadsheet. Most of us only do it within the application because the data’s already there, and the function is provided for us for free.

But how much is a graph worth which looks precisely how you want it to? How much is a graph worth which takes far less time to create? Our guess is that it’s worth a lot more than the price of a dedicated graphing application. And we reckon the best such program is Axum.

Axum’s intuitive interface makes it easy to learn and use. Just import your data from virtually any program, select the data, and click on a 2D or 3D plot button to create a graph instantly. Once you’ve done it, you’ll wonder why you ever battled with spreadsheets before.

Just as with any general office-type application, Axum graphs can be printed, exported in a variety of formats, copied and pasted into a word processing or desktop publishing program, or emailed directly.
But it’s with the type of graphs which ought to be easy (but so often aren’t) that Axum really comes into its own. It’s ideal if you need to combine multiple data sets and multiple axes on a graph, or need to arrange multiple, editable graphs on a page.

With Axum, you get all the basic 2D graphs types like line, bar, area, scatter and pie, but also specialised types such as curve fits, histograms, polar plots, error bars, vector plots, lowess plots, bubble plots, and more: in fact over 90 in total. And when it comes to 3D and contour plotting, the options are scientific standard. Plot 3D mesh or contours using data sets of virtually unlimited size (using gridded or x,y,z scatter data), or create impressive output with colour draping. Specify a range of colours, and Axum shades bar charts, area charts, surfaces and contours automatically.

Axum also includes a series of data analysis tools: transform, manipulate and sort large data sets, and perform statistical analysis (including nonlinear curve fitting). Statistical techniques include hypothesis testing, power and sample size calculations, logistic and log-linear regression, and time-series calculations.

Do we sound enthusiastic? We probably do. But here at Adept Scientific, we’ve seen the response from the many first-time users of Axum over the years, and it’s a product which really performs.

Highlights of Axum 7
The latest version, Axum 7, has enhanced Excel integration, new statistics tests, new plot types, updated support for importing and exporting data, additional formatting options, faster data access to graphics,
new project management organisation, and more.

Enhanced graphics features include a probability plot comparing probability distributions; a Pareto plot; and specification of the precision to use when inserting a curve-fit equation.

Axum 7 offers new statistical techniques including the Shapiro-Wilk test for normality, the Durbin-Watson test statistic, and command-line skewness and kurtosis.

Other new features include the Axum Data Migration Wizard, a redesigned help system, improved computational performance and a faster graphical user interface.