Origin vs Sigma Plot

Poll time! Which do you use for making your publication-ready graphs/charts/tables: Origin or Sigma Plot?

I honestly haven't made much progress in my paper writing though I have finished off one of the grants already. What I have done however, is assemble a bunch of data that I can turn into publication-ready figures...as soon as I figure out which software to use.

This would look good in a paper...right?*

My advisor uses Sigma Plot, a co-worker uses Origin. At this point I'm leaning towards Origin because they have a student version that I could purchase for $50/year. I didn't see a student version for Sigma Plot, in fact the cheapest version I saw was $499 (ouch!). Ideally work would get me a license for creating publication quality figures but at this point I'm going to assume that I will be footing the bill.

So, what should it be: Origin or Sigma Plot?

*Not actual data. I know it looks good (ha) but I really made this in Paint in less than five minutes.


UPDATE (6/14/2011):  I've had some time to use both Sigma Plot and Origin now (my Sigma Plot license expired any my company decided not to renew it) and I wanted to give some more information that someone will hopefully find helpful.  I've only created very basic graphs with both software, graphs one could create in Microsoft Excel but look better in professional software.

I found Sigma Plot easier to use right off the bat.  I was able to copy and paste my MS Excel data into Sigma Plot and create a graph within a matter of minutes without reading the manual - pretty awesome.  When it came time to stack graphs, make a secondary axis, add error bars, etc. I had to pull out the manual and found the process rather painful.

Origin I could not use without reading the manual.  Time consuming and tedious, it took me a ridiculous amount of time to get my data in Excel and an even longer amount of time to figure out how to plot on the secondary axis.  Origin isn't all bad - once I got the hang of it, Origin was really simple to use.

Hectic Day

In one of my recent posts I mentioned that I respond well to bribery, especially in the form of cookies. I probably should have mentioned in that post that all the students in the lab received cookies shortly before our advisor flew to Mexico for a week.

The cookies were the incentive to keep our microbes live and well, not to mention have a bunch of stuff ready to share in the weekly meeting. My weekly meeting occurs every Tuesday afternoon for an hour. It takes the full hour because I either have an experiment that goes really well (which gets my advisor very excited about what I can publish) or one that goes really poorly (which confuses my advisor and causes us to spend significant time troubleshooting the problem).

My advisor came back yesterday. Regularly scheduled meeting was today.

I have two different experiments running right now: one is doing great, the other not so much. The two experiments, combined with the fact that I was out of town since last Friday and didn't get a chance to assemble my data over the weekend like I normally do (I got back in town last night at 11:30), meant that I was frantically sitting in the lab all morning trying to put together information to show my advisor. I finished just in the nick of time by looking through my lab notebook during class and skipping breakfast & lunch.

The hectic pace of earlier today has left me feeling unmotivated to continue working on a take-home midterm I have due Thursday. I must pull myself together! While I'd love for this midterm to complete itself I doubt it will happen.

City View

The nice thing about my lab is that is has windows. Lots of windows. A whole row of windows in fact!

The bad thing about the windows is that they're high off the ground. In fact, the bottom of the window is just above my eye level. Most of the time I can only see sky when I look out the window...but if I climb up on the lab bench then I get views like this:

At night.

During the day.

Pretty! Especially now when all the leaves are changing color and with Lake Michigan such a nice blue in the background.

Classes, the Unnecessary Evil

I've always thought that the purpose of graduate school was to become very specialized in one topic.

For a bachelor's degree you learn a lot in four (plus or minus) years and it covers a wide variety of topics. For a master's degree you hone in on one topic from your bachelor's and specialize; becoming the master of that area. And finally for a doctorate you become really really specialized in one area from your master's degree.

I think the following comic from PhD Comics says it well with the following graph:

"Piled Higher and Deeper" by Jorge Cham
www.phdcomics.com

It's so true. And if you don't already subscribe to PhD Comics you should. Seriously.

Throughout that period of school you take a lot of classes. Because the bachelor's degree is so general you have a wide variety of options to chose from. The same, more or less depending on where you do your master's at, goes for the master's degree. But by the time you get to your doctorate all your research is cutting-edge - or at least to new to have classes devoted to the topic. So you take the classes that you think will help you pass the qualifying exams or the few that you find interesting.

Classes then become this evil, time-consuming thing that helps to foster procrastination. Why work on that journal article when you have homework to do? So few classes are applicable (at least for me) that it's almost a waste of time. Professors don't like teaching them because they take away from time they could be writing grants, students don't like taking them because it takes time away from research.

Classes at the graduate level are one of the really big differences between the educational system in the United States versus Europe. Here in the US it's classes and research until you fill the credit requirements and then just research. In Europe, or at least the UK, it's research-based where students work mostly towards the end goal (thesis/dissertation) without having to fiddle around with classes.

I'd like to just get these classes done so I can focus on my research! Especially right now when I'm trying to learn MATLAB (and failing, sigh) but still have a large "to-do" list accumulating. Perhaps this is just me complaining but how do you feel about class-work at the graduate level?

Bribery

I respond well to it.


These cookies were baked by my research advisor's wife and yes, they're as delicious as they look. Because I was at work when the advisor brought them to campus I didn't get them till late in the evening but from the sounds of it there was a large bag of cookies for everyone in my lab. That's a lot of cookies to make!

Coxie Pt. 3 (or Wordless Wednesday)

Coxie has recently undergone some severe changes. I'd rather not share Coxie's deep dark secrets but I will share an updated photo.

If you remember my last update on Coxie there is much more going on now. Yay, Coxie!

What Editors Want

I'd like to share another article on writing that I found through Julie from A Very Focused Blog About School and Work. Julie is the person who originally introduced me to The Chronicle of Higher Education and subsequently the article on How to Write Less Badly.

This article is called "What Editors Want," a self-explanatory title in my opinion. I'm actively working on two grant proposals and one paper right now and I want my work to be as polished as possible. This article offers several key pieces of advice as to how to make editors happy; after all, they're the ones who have the final decision as to if your work is going to be accepted or not.

If you're writing something to be published:

1. Know the journal you are attempting to publish in
   
2. Proof-read, proof-read, proof-read!
3. Don't deviate from the style guide

The article has more pieces of advice but those are the main ones. I really like reading articles like these because although the information they convey is very basic it is still very applicable. Proof-read your e-mails, proof-read your tweets, proof-read your status updates. If you're limited to 140 characters don't exceed that amount. If you have a graduate school blog don't post about your grievances with city parking tickets (oops).

The article does end with a positive suggestion: Develop a healthy attitude toward rejection.

It's necessary to stay sane.