Software

Overview

These are softwares I’ve found useful and have improved my ability to do research. Let me know by email if you have any suggestions, improvements or criticism. You can find these by either clicking on them or searching on google.

• Evernote/ OneNote: Any word document, project notes, stimulus materials, directions, files – any text whatsoever that you’ll ever have to retrieve – can be stored in Evernote or OneNote. Since it’s searchable you don’t need to organize note documents as much into files and folders as they can be easily found again.

• Dropbox/Google Drive/Mega: This is a folder on your computer that’s backed up online and accessible through a web interface or on any other computer linked to the Dropbox account. They extremely useful for collaborating and sharing lab files across multiple computers, and doing a backup. 2 GB for free (Dropbox), 15 GB free (Google Drive), and 50 GB free (Mega).

• EssentialPIM: This is a personal information manager that makes it easy to control your appoints, to-do lists, notes, email messages, password entries, and contacts. It is an affordable replacement for outlook…….. Synchronization with MS Outlook.

• Google Sites: I use the templates, easy customizability, and instantaneous updating to make my website and create wiki-style pages. There may be something better.

• SAS: SAS has been the undisputed market leader in the commercial analytics space. The software offers a huge array of statistical functions, has a good GUI (Enterprise Guide & Miner) for people to learn quickly and provides awesome technical support. However, it ends up being the most expensive option and is not always enriched with the latest statistical functions.

• Python: Python is a general-purpose language, it’s great for data structures and programming in general, it has a vast collection of libraries that you can use. Installing them sometimes is not very easy.

• R: R is oriented to statistical analysis and data processing on a small scale. It has a very huge collection of packages to do almost anything you might imagine with data and they are easy to install. As a general programming language, it is much slower than python and the syntax is very confusing.

• Matlab: is commercial (fist huge difference) and oriented to mathematical processes, doing stuff with matrices and related things. It’s very easy to program very complex things using Matlab as you have all the tools you need at your fingertips. Octave is a free version of Matlab and should be considered in the mix.

  In terms of speed, Matlab is slower than R and R is slower than Python. In terms of abstraction Matlab > R > Python. So the speed of code is the exact inverse of the speed of coding :)

• Emacs/ SublimeText/ Komodo Edit/VS Code/Atom : For editing.

• LaTex: LaTeX is a high-quality typesetting system; it includes features designed for the production of technical and scientific documentation. LaTeX is the de-facto standard for the communication and publication of scientific documents.

• Coggle: Coggle is a free mind-mapping web application. Like other mind-mapping software, Coggle produces hierarchically structured documents, like a branching tree. This contrasts with conventional collaborative editors, like Google Docs, which provide either linear (text document), or tabular (spreadsheet) document formats.

• Mendeley: Mendeley is a desktop and web program produced by Elsevier for managing and sharing research papers, discovering research data and collaborating online, and managing articles.

• Calibre: Calibre (stylized calibre), a free and open-source e-book computer software application suite which runs on multiple platforms, allows users to manage e-book collections as well as to create, edit, and read e-books.

• Anki: Anki is a spaced repetition flashcard program. Remembering things easily, such as words.

Time Management:

• Pomodairo gives a timer program, in which you can write what you plan to accomplish in a specific time interval, then start off the timer. Helps with improving time management and setting objectives.
• Klok2 allows you to make a log of what you’ve spent your time doing, assigning it to different “projects”. It does the job reasonably, but I’d like to find something easier to use. (any better suggestions?)
• imOnTime is a reminder program that pops up one-time or repeating reminders at specific times. It’s not free though and there may be better options out there, so I’d like to find something easier to u