18

Community Analysis Package

4

Creating and editing a data set

Preparing large data sets in a spreadsheet program

18

Data entry from within CAP

19

Editing existing data

20

Saving edited data or creating a new data file

20

4.1

Preparing large data sets in a spreadsheet program

You do not need to create data sets within CAP; in fact the best way to enter

large data sets is to use a spreadsheet such as Excel or Lotus 1 2 3, which will

give access to a wide range of sorting and editing procedures to ease your task.

A data set should have the following format:

Title1

Title2

Title3

Species1

21

1

5

Species2

15

5

0

Species3

0

7

0

The normal arrangement of community data within CAP is to have the samples

(quadrates) as columns and the species as the rows. However, Excel has a

maximum number of columns of 255, which can prove difficult if you have a data

set with a very large number of sites/samples. If this is the case, the data can be

arranged in Excel with the species forming the columns, as the 

Transpose

 option

within CAP can be used to switch columns and rows. Numbers can be either

integer or real; some methods may require integers, in most such cases the

program will run with real data which will be automatically rounded.

The above table and the image below show you how the data will look in Excel.

The samples are arranged in columns. Each sample has a title field. Start the first

sample in column 2. The data consists of the number of individuals observed in

the sample. Put in zeros rather than leaving cells blank. The species names are

input from row 2 in column 1.

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