Starting a new project

In this tutorial, we're going to learn how to enter and edit data in StatsCloud. We'll do this by creating a new project that considers how many hours of Netflix people watch.

To create a new project, all you need to do go to https://statscloud.app/new and a new project will open up in a new tab in your browser. Make sure to keep this tab open as we'll be revisiting it throughout this tutorial.

Let's start by giving this project a title. You can do this by easily by clicking / tapping the title at the top (where is says New project).

Task: Start a new project in StatsCloud.

Start a new project in statscloud by going to https://statscloud.app/new.

When the app loads up, give the project the title of Netflix study.

Entering data

Great! Now we just need to get some data in it.

There are a few ways of entering data into StatsCloud. We can import some from a file we have saved somewhere (on our device or in the cloud), we can copy and paste some in, or we can just start entering data in manually. Let's look at our data first and then you can decide which method you'd like to try.

Age	Sex	Netflix hours
34	male	10
27	female	16
19	female	18
23	male	20
54	male	9
47	female	10
35	female	11
42	male	16
39	male	12
65	female	8

Download data

Importing data from a file

Quite often, your data will be stored in a spreadsheet file, and the most common format for spreadsheet files is the .csv file (which stands for 'Comma separated values'). Any spreadsheet software (e.g. Excel, Numbers) will let you export your work as a .csv file and you can import these into statscloud really easily just by clicking / tapping the 'Import' button on the Data tab.

You can download the data above here and then import this file into StatsCloud.

Entering data manually

Of course, if you want to, you can just enter the data in manually. If you do, you'll notice that statscloud works just like any other spreadsheet software; you can navigate around the grid using the arrow keys on your keyboard.

Task: Get the data into StatsCloud

Using either one of these methods, get the data above into your new statscloud project

Note: if you're using a touch device, it's usually easier to import a file rather than copying and pasting the data in

Customising the variables

OK, our data is in there now, but the columns need some names. We're going to see how to customise them now.

In StatsCloud, each column is a variable, and we can change some settings about these columns / variables by visiting the Variables tab. However, we don't need to do that just yet; we can still edit our variables here in the Data tab, so we're going to try that now.

To bring up options for a column, all we do is click on the column heading.

Name

The first thing we want to do, for instance, is give each of our columns a name. Once you've opened the column options box, just click on the 'New Variable' text and edit the name there.

Data types

In this menu, you can see there's some other information about our column too: The next thing statscloud tells us is what type of data we have in this column. We have the option of numeric (interval/ratio), category (nominal), rank (ordinal), text, time or date. When we enter data into a column, statscloud will automatically choose the best data type for us. However, you can override this by selecting another data type from this menu. Just remember that it's not always possible to choose any data type (once you've entered text in a column, for instance, you cannot make this a numeric variable).

Colours, locking and hiding

There are a couple of other things we can do here too. We can give our columns a colour (which can be useful if you're dealing with a lot of variables and want to colour-code them to make them easier to find in your spreadsheet) and we can hide or lock them too.

Hiding a column makes it disappear from our dataset but doesn't delete it. This can be useful when you want to hide some variables you're not interested in anymore to tidy up your dataset.

Locking a column prevents you from editing it. This isn't much use to us at the moment, though it will be useful when other people are working on the same project as us and we want to restrict what they can edit.

Task: Edit these columns

• Give each of these columns a name; Age, Sex, and Netflix hours_
• Change the colour of the demographic variables (Age and Sex) to green and Netflix hours to orange
• Hide the Age column
• Lock the Age column

Editing value labels

There are a few other things about our variables we can edit, and we do this in the Variables tab. When you visit this tab, you'll see a list of all your variables and some options you can customise. If you're on the desktop interface, your list of variables will be on the left and, if you're using the touch interface, you can access them through the dropdown list.

From the Variables tab, we can do all the things we could before (set the data type, edit the colour, and set the variables to be hidden or locked). We can also change some other things:

If you have a category (or rank) variable selected, you can see there is a 'Values' heading in the main window. This lists all the values we have attached to that variable. When you started entering data, statscloud will generate these for you automatically based on what appears in that column. For our Sex variable, we have two set up already; male and female. You can see that statscloud also assigns a 'shortcut' key to these too (and entering this shortcut key into a cell in the Data tab will automatically auto-fill it with that value). You can edit the values and the shortcut keys here just by clicking on them.

At the moment, we only have two values for sex, but we might want to add another one. You can do this easily by clicking the Add value label button and giving it a name. When you do, you'll see that statscloud will automatically generate a shortcut key for us as well. Try doing that now.

Task: Add another value label to the Sex variable

Add Prefer not to say as another value label in the Sex variable.

You can see there are other headings (for instance on Related Conditions, Form Options, and Notes). Don't worry about those for now, we're going to come back to them later!

Form view

Previously, we entered our data by either copying and pasting it in, or by importing a .csv file with it in. We can also add data by just typing it in. However, that's not much fun on a touch device, so statscloud has a Form view to make this a bit easier for us.

You can enter Form view by going back to the Data tab and clicking the toggle switch in the top right corner. When you do, you'll see the grid turns into a touch-friendly form that we can use to enter our data. When we're entering values for a category variable (like Sex, or the ones we've added), you can see that all the value labels are here for us and we just need to tap on them to choose that value.

Once we've finished entering data for one participant, we can move through to the next one by using the navigation buttons at the bottom of the window.

We need to add some data in now, so here's our dataset again but with the some additional information for Marital status and Qualifications included.

Age	Sex	Netflix hours	Marital status	Qualifications
34	male	10	In a relationship	Undergraduate
27	female	16	In a relationship	Undergraduate
19	female	18	Single	A levels
23	male	20	In a relationship	GCSE
54	male	9	Divorced	A levels
47	female	10	Married	Postgraduate
35	female	11	Single	Undergraduate
42	male	16	Married	GCSE
39	male	12	In a relationship	A levels
65	female	8	Married	GCSE

Task: Use the form view to enter this data

Go back to the Data tab and switch to 'Form view'

While in the Form view, add in this additional data. When you're finished, toggle back to the Grid view to see all the data you've added.

Opening projects with a link

Finally, we're going to look at how we can open up a project using a link. To do this, we're first going to quit our project (don't worry - we'll get everything back in a minute)! Whenever you close a project in StatsCloud, your browser will ask you if you're sure you want to leave (to stop you losing your work when you navigate away from it accidentally). Once we've done that, we're going to open a new project with the data and variables already set up for us. Let's see how that works:

Task: Reopen your project.

• Close the tab with your project.
• Open this link

Voilà! You should find this project opens up with the original data and variables we set up earlier. You've just witnessed one of the best things about using a web app for your statistics projects; you can open up a whole project with a single link without the need to download or install anything or have anything saved anywhere.

If you look at the URL in your address bar, you'll see this works because the link contains some instructions that statscloud understands and initiates when it loads up. Don't worry about what any of this means though (you don't need to understand it!)

Note: A statscloud PRO account will allow you to store your projects to that account and will autosave projects as you work on them. See the Products page for more details.

Recap

You now know how data entry works in StatsCloud. Here's what we've covered in this tutorial:

• How to enter data into statscloud (through copy-pasting, importing, and manually typing it in)
• How to set up and edit variables
• How to enter data through the Form view

This should give you a good understanding of how statscloud works and prepare you well for the next chapters.

Task: Try playing around with some other example datasets!

• Marvel movies
• Chickens
• Disney remakes
• Fisher Iris
• Happiest countries)