hines@CELLBIO.STANFORD.EDU ("MELISSA HINES") (05/21/89)
I am in charge of the computer facilities for a rather large physical
chemistry lab at Stanford University. There has been a lot of demand in
our lab for a reasonable graphing package for the Macintosh. We have been
using both Cricket Graph and Trapeze, but they are woefully inadequate for
our needs. In particular we need software that can handle relatively large
numbers of data points (up to 30,000 or so), print at the full resolution of
our laser printer, and perform simple analysis. Recently we acquired IGOR
from WaveMetrics, a new data analysis and graphics package aimed
expressly at the scientific and engineering market. Igor has significantly
exceeded our best expectations. After using Igor for approximately six
weeks, I would like to share my enthusiasm with you.
Before describing all of the features of Igor, let me first stress that Igor
is not meant to be a Cricket Graph replacement! Igor is an extremely
powerful tool and as such is not as simple to use as Cricket Graph or other
low level graphing packages. In our lab, most people have had to spend a
few hours playing with the examples in the manual to feel comfortable
with the Igor environment. Although Igor does follow all of the usual
Macintosh conventions and has a very friendly user interface, it does
require a bit from the user.
The first impression everyone has of Igor is that is _FAST_. I mean
REALLY FAST. For example, for a graph of 1500 points, it takes
approximately 11 seconds to load the data from disk and 7 seconds to
graph it (on a Mac SE w/ 2 Meg of memory). Zooming in on a portion of the
graph is almost instantaneous (~ 2 seconds). Igor is the only graphing
package that I have used that uses off screen bitmaps to draw the data.
By doing this, screen updates and such are blindingly fast (especially when
compared to programs such as Cricket Graph and Trapeze).
Another very nice feature of Igor is that the length of the data is limited
only by available memory.
Igor is not only a very advanced graphics package, it also contains very
impressive data analysis tools. First, it can fit data to a curve (linear,
polynomial, Gaussian, Lorentzian, exponential, etc.) and return statistics
on the fit. They use routines from "Numerical Recipes" by Press,
Flannery, Teukolsky and Vetterling, so I am fairly confident of their
methods. Igor can also easily generate graphs of mathematical functions.
There are also many features that I have not yet had occasion to use. Igor
can perform both a fast Fourier transform and an inverse FFT. It has a
number of built in functions such as Bessel functions, modified Bessel
functions, binomial distributions, noise functions, gamma functions, and
so on. It can perform complex arithmetic and display real and imaginary
parts of functions. The list of capabilities is quite long, and I'm sure that
a posting such as this could never do justice to its full capabilities.
The graphing capabilities of Igor are equally impressive. In brief, it can:
1) print at the full resolution of the printer. This includes drawing
hairlines.
2) handle subscripts and superscripts in the title, labels and annotations.
3) draw _true_ dashed and dotted lines
4) print multiple graphs per page or multiple pages per graph. When you
do the latter, it even draws unobtrusive ticks to help you trim and line up
the pages.
Perhaps what impressed me the most about Igor is the technical support
from WaveMetrics. After playing with Igor for a couple of weeks, I
received a questionnaire on my impressions of their product. After filling
it out, I e-mailed them some additional comments. In my letter I
mentioned that I thought a peak integration macro would be useful to many
users. The next morning I checked my mail (at 10 AM) and found the macro
waiting for me! I have been in contact with them a couple of times since
then and have found them to be very interested in my opinions and
EXTREMELY helpful. I will restrain myself from relating my experiences
with Cricket Graph.
At this point you are probably wondering why you have never seen
advertisements for such a wonderful product. Apparently, WaveMetrics
would like to wait until the next version is out before stepping up their
marketing. (Note: I believe the upgrade will be free to registered owners).
In conclusion, I think that Igor is a MUST HAVE piece of software for
anyone in the sciences or engineering. It can be ordered from:
WaveMetrics
P.O. Box 2088
Lake Oswego, OR 97035
(503) 635-8849
AppleLink D1832
I believe the current price is $195.
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* Melissa Hines * E-mail: Hines@Cellbio.Stanford.Edu *
* Dept. of Chemistry * US mail: Dept. of Chemistry *
* Stanford University * Stanford, CA 94305 *
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