Web-based Survey Tools

The World Wide Web provides an effective means of supporting survey projects, particularly when data collectors are geographically dispersed. Wireless and wireline communications can be used to integrate the survey team by providing current and consistent supporting materials to all members of the project team. Interactive tutorials, survey instructions and updates, technical support, computer-assisted survey instrument software and updates, text-based and graphic survey management reports, data views for monitoring and editing, and summary reports are some of the tools that can be delivered via Web browsers to data collection staff, survey managers, clients, and the public. We will describe Web-based tools that have been developed to support a national survey of natural resources, and discuss possible extensions of this work

The Lish: A Data Model for Grid Free Spreadsheets

Throughout the history of the spreadsheet, and throughout the majority of research into improving it, the grid of cells has remained a constant as the underlying data model. An idea that has received recent interest is to provide users with a spreadsheet-like environment based on something other than a grid. The attraction is that if salient features of the data structure can be made more explicit, the machine will be able to provide certain types of error checking and automation. In this project I consider one such grid replacement, a new data model which I call the “lish”. It is based on nested lists of cells, composed according to rules that allow repeating structures to be described. It allows columns, tables, groups of tables and other structures to be treated as coherent objects. This supports a novel form of cell range selection, and allows the machine to ensure that related structures are kept consistent. The model is also more accommodating than the grid of dynamic space allocation, where the number of cells occupied by a result is not known in advance. Then, I develop a “lish calculus”, an extension to vector arithmetic for hierarchical structures that provides a concise notation for calculations with lishes. This simplifies the usual spreadsheet formula expressions, and enables the machine to interpret them consistently with the context in which they are located. I evaluate the lish in the framework of the cognitive dimensions of notations, with the help of example use cases and a user study based on a prototype lish editor. These verify many of the hypothesised advantages, but also reveal some difficulties for users. I close with an analysis of how the lish might be revised to address these shortcomings, while continuing to capitalise on the essential benefits

An aid to convert spreadsheets to higher quality presentations

A table is often the preferred medium for presenting quantative information. In some cases the presentation of quantative information can be presented as textual data or graphics at a loss of precision and clarity. The subject of this thesis is to aid the extraction and production of quality tables from a common means of preparing data in tabular form, the spreadsheet. Spreadsheet processors are in common use. Many tables are prepared by a range of users from the na??ıve users to experts in graphic arts. Spreadsheet data is also produced in automatic form from applications. We will review the specification of tabular data, presentation formats, and the systems and their associated formats for storing and interchange of data. The goal of this research is the specification and development of a system to convert common spreadsheet data to a markup language that will allow for presentation of the data at a higher level of typographic excellence. The desired characteristics of this system will include 1. Robust importing of data from an array of commercial and open spreadsheet processors 2. Formatting decisions of the output specified by the user rather than taken from the spreadsheet 3. Development or identification of a canonical form that is robust, does not lose data, and allows for repeated automatic application of styles 4. Development of a program to convert this canonical form into a markup system

Towards a Technological Ecosystem to Provide Information Dashboards as a Service: A Dynamic Proposal for Supplying Dashboards Adapted to Specific Scenarios

[EN]Data are crucial to improve decision-making and obtain greater benefits in any type of activity. However, the large amount of information generated by new technologies has made data analysis and knowledge generation a complex task. Numerous tools have emerged to facilitate this generation of knowledge, such as dashboards. Although dashboards are useful tools, their effectiveness can be affected by poor design or by not taking into account the context in which they are placed. Therefore, it is necessary to design and create custom dashboards according to the audience and data domain. This paper presents an application of the software product line paradigm and the integration of this approach into a web service to allow users to request source code for customized information dashboards. The main goal is to introduce the idea of creating a holistic ecosystem of different services to craft and integrate information visualizations in a variety of contexts. One of the contexts that can be especially favored by this approach is the educational context, where learning analytics, data analysis of student performance, and didactic tools are becoming very relevant. Three different use cases of this approach are presented to illustrate the benefits of the developed generative service

Table recognition in spreadsheets via a graph representation

Spreadsheet software are very popular data management tools. Their ease of use and abundant functionalities equip novices and professionals alike with the means to generate, transform, analyze, and visualize data. As a result, spreadsheets are a great resource of factual and structured information. This accentuates the need to automatically understand and extract their contents. In this paper, we present a novel approach for recognizing tables in spreadsheets. Having inferred the layout role of the individual cells, we build layout regions. We encode the spatial interrelations between these regions using a graph representation. Based on this, we propose Remove and Conquer (RAC), an algorithm for table recognition that implements a list of carefully curated rules. An extensive experimental evaluation shows that our approach is viable. We achieve significant accuracy in a dataset of real spreadsheets from various domains. © 2018 IEEE.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft