This page is meant to be a quick way to access the software we frequently use in Data Services. Almost all programs should be free and accessible to those in academia.

Tableau Prep and Desktop

Tableau Prep is built to clean, manipulate, and join datasets to prepare them for use in other programs, typically Tableau Desktop. Tableau Prep is easy to use, has a clean interface letting you see exactly how your changes affect the data, and does not require familiarity with programming to use. Tableau Desktop is a powerful data visualization tool that can create modern interactive dashboards and graphs. Tableau Desktop can help create useful and great looking visuals with a few clicks. 

Both Prep and Desktop will use the following links to ensure that you are an active student or teacher, and will shortly send you your license code to use on the programs. The installation process is very simple and explained clearly through the Tableau site. 

For students:

https://www.tableau.com/academic/students#form

For instructors:

https://www.tableau.com/academic/teaching#form

 

Gephi

Gephi is an open-source program that creates network diagrams. A network diagram visualizes how data points are connected and can be grounded (such as showing how universities are connected on a map, with each node resting on the college's location) or abstract (such as a diagram showing which actors work together).  These are typically used to show how your data points are connected to one another, and has a wide number of applications such as social networks, tracking spread of diseases, and mapping collaborations. Once the user selects how the data should be connected Gephi uses sorting algorithms to place each data point and build the connections between them. Gephi includes a number of sorting algorithms and the ability to modify a lot of the visual aspects of the diagram, allowing a wide number of ways to show your data. It is necessary to know how the data you are working with is structured, and what you wish to visualize. Gephi has requirements for how the data must look to be imported into this program, but there are plug-ins available that can structure your data automatically to help alleviate this process. 

Gephi is open-source and free to download and use:

https://gephi.org/