2.1 How do we typically use software in science?

Most scientists rely on both general and specialized pieces of software for various parts of their work. For data entry they likely use spreadsheet software Excel, though increasingly Google Sheets. For data analysis they might use one of many options, such as GraphPad Prism, Minitab, SAS, SPSS, or STATA. For making plots, many people will export their export their results back to Excel, while others use specialized software like SigmaPlot. Many scientists also use specialized programs; in ecology many researchers do GIS in ArcGIS or QGIS, mark-recapture analysis in Program MARK or Distance, use RAMAS or Vortex for population viability analysis, or build custom mathematical programs in MatLab or Python. If they do multivariate statistics like [ordination](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordination_(statistics) the may use a specialized stats program like PC-ORD.

Since software can be expensive, some scientists will rely on Excel for all of their work. Excel can do many things, but it can’t do everything all the specialized types of software can do. Moreover, its very limited in the range of statistics it can do and graphs it can make.