When you create a new data table, choose between a XY, Column, Grouped, Contingency, Survival and Parts of a Whole table. Understanding how these tables are used will make it much easier to use Prism effectively.
Spending a few minutes reading about the various approaches to making bar graphs will prevent some aggravation later. Bar graphs can be created from Colum, Grouped, XY or Contingency tables.
Click on the Data Table, Info, Results, Graphs or Layouts folder name in the Navigator to open the Gallery. Or click the Gallery button on the bottom toolbar.
The gallery shows all sheets in a section. Double click on the one you want to go to. Or select several sheets to work on at once.
Open the Family folder to see all sheets linked to the current one. Or click the Link button in the bottom toolbar to jump to one of those linked sheets.
Prism can plot error bars directly from raw data. Prism lets you enter SD or SEM if you have calculated them elsewhere, but there is no need to do so. Enter your raw data, and let Prism do the rest. Prism offers analyses that perform row and column descriptive statistics, but these are only to help you understand the data. You do not need to run these analyses to plot error bars.
After you drop the data or results table onto the graph, a dialog will pop up where you can choose which data sets to include and which axis to plot those data on (right or left).
If you made a mistake, or want to try different analysis choices, you can always return to the analysis parameter dialogs. Don't repeat the analysis unless you want two copies of the results. To open the analysis parameters dialog, click the analysis parameters in the upper left corner of any results sheet or in the toolbar.
Click Learn from any Analyze dialog to learn more about the analysis. Our help goes beyond program help, and explains the principles behind the analysis.
Once you've finished any analysis, click the Analysis Checklist button in the toolbar to make sure you are interpreting the results correctly.
Select any block of tabular results, copy to the clipboard, and paste onto any graph or layout. This will be a live link. If you change the data, or the analysis choices, the embedded results table will update.
Many analyses (i. e. Transform) create results tables that can be used as a data table. These results tables have green grids, unlike tables with red grids that contain tabulations of results that cannot be graphed. From any results table with a green grid, click Analyze to analyze the results. You can make the analysis chain as long as you want. For example, you could Transform, then Normalize, then fit with Nonlinear regression, then transform the residuals from the regression.
Prism Windows can copy graphs to the clipboard in one of three formats. You can tell Prism to only copy one format (File & Printer tab of the preferences dialog). If graphs pasted into other programs don't look right, try all these settings.
Prism offers a variety of formats. When possible, choose formats that include information about vectors and fonts (WMF, EMF, EPS, PDF) over formats that only describe bitmaps (TIF, JPG, PNG).
You aren't stuck with the sheet names that Prism assigns, or their order. Rename or reorder your data tables (and graphs...). When you rename data tables, linked analyses and graphs are automatically renamed. Delete sheets you no longer need.
Info sheetscontain both structured information (lot numbers, page numbers,....) and unstructured notes. Each info sheet can be linked to a particular data table.
Some people make the mistake of starting a new project for every data table, not realizing that a Prism project (file) can have up to 500 data tables, analyses and graphs. You can keep an entire project in one file.
Don't define 'project' too broadly, because a huge project can be hard to navigate. You can always merge projects later, or include a graph from one project in a layout of another.
If you want to change your mind about analysis choices, you can do so. You can change the parameters (options) for the analysis. Or you can change which data table and which data sets are analyzed. There is no need to start the analysis again, which leaves an obsolete copy of the results in your project.
Prism automatically makes a graph of each data table. So when you want to make a second graph of that same data, people commonly copy the data and paste onto a new table which is automatically graphed. No need for that. You can make any number of graphs from the same table. Just click the New button, and then choose Graph of Existing Data.
No need to change the fonts, colors, line thickness, etc. etc. for each graph in a series. Instead, format one graph, and use Magic (Make Graphs Consistent) to instantly fix the others.
We call a Prism file a "project", but you can decide how large to make it. Huge files can be hard to navigate. So it often makes sense to keep files of reasonable size. You can always merge projects later, or include a graph from one project in a layout of another.
There is no need to repeat yourself. Once you have a graph you like, Prism offers several ways to make that graph again with different data. Start by learning to clone a graph.
When working on a large project, do more than backup the current version. What happens if you mistakenly delete key data? What happens if the file someone gets corrupted? Use Prism's Backup command to save interim versions as you work.
