Make Scientific Graph Analysis Accessible to All Students

High quality science education includes students making and analyzing simple graphs. As student access to technology is increasingly shifted to netbooks, tablets, and mobile devices, traditional hard-drive based graphing applications (Vernier’s Logger Pro) have been replaced by new cloud-based software (plot.ly, Desmos, and Vernier’s Graphical Analysis mobile app). While excellent in many ways, none of these solutions has yet to offer as streamlined a tool for graphing and analyzing simple relationships in science as Logger Pro does on the more traditional platform.

We feel there is a need for existing software to add functionality to address this issue, to make scientific graph analysis as simple and accessible as possible for students from all backgrounds, using platforms our students access most often: mobile phones web browsers. We’re asking a software designer to make available the following features in their software, to help make the process of making and analyzing simple graphs in science both streamlined and consistent with scientific practices emphasized in our courses.

This software should allow users to allow users to quickly and easily:

Enter data manually in columns, with custom variables, abbreviations, and units.

• “Calculated columns” can be created to reference manual columns.


• Units should carry through to calculated columns.

Create a scatter plot of data.

• Users easily choose variables to graph on each axis from the graph itself.


• Variable names and units carry through separately to graph axis display


• “Autoscale” axes from zero.


• Manually scale axes by entering max and min values.


• Graph defaults to a scatter plot, but offers an option to “connect points”.


• Multiple sets of data can be plotted together on the same axes


• Add error bars to both vertical and horizontal axes


• Axes can be scaled from the graph itself by clicking and dragging

Fit a trend line to all data - with linear, quadratic, or exponential fits.

• Select a subset of data and fit a trend line to only these points.


• Easily display algebraic relationship with variables and units from columns.


• Manually adjust coefficient values for trend line fits.


• Display some correlation value to reflect the quality of the fit.

Work and share seamlessly between various different devices.

• Function on popular mobile phone platforms and within a web browser.


• Save raw files in the cloud or on a phone.


• Print or export pdf of data table and graph to email or cloud storage.