Compare / Excel
Dioptra vs Excel for lab data
Excel is the tool everyone has, and it is the first stop for most lab data. Dioptra replaces the part of that route where data get tidied, tested and plotted: text stays text, tests come with their assumption checks, and the graph is a journal figure. For everything else, Excel is the more capable spreadsheet.
01 Side by side
Feature comparison
| Dioptra 0.4 | Microsoft Excel | |
|---|---|---|
| Who has it | A free download | Almost every lab computer already has it |
| General data work | Tables for experiments, with formulas, pivots and transposes | Far more: any layout, lookups, pivot tables, macros, budgets and inventories |
| Gene names and other text | Text stays text; SEPT2 is never a date | Converted to dates by default, a known source of errors in published gene lists [1][2]; Microsoft 365 added options in 2023 that turn some conversions off |
| Pasting values | Full stored precision; decimal commas detected and reported | Copies what the cell displays |
| Statistical tests | Twenty analyses with assumption checks, effect sizes with CIs and post hoc tests | Analysis ToolPak: t tests, ANOVA without post hoc tests, regression, correlation; no nonparametric tests [3] |
| Assumption checks | Normality, equal variances, sample size and outliers, run with the test | None |
| Curve fitting | Dose-response and other models with CIs of the parameters | Chart trendlines, or Solver set up by hand |
| Survival, ROC, Bland–Altman, PCA | Built in | Not built in |
| Scientific graphs | Points on every column graph, violin, estimation, Kaplan–Meier, SuperPlot; sizes in mm | Business charts; error bars and scatter points need manual setup |
| Record of what was done | Formulas, analysis specifications and a command history in the file | Formulas in cells; manual edits leave no trace |
| Sharing and co-editing | One open file; works with git or a shared folder | Real-time co-editing in Microsoft 365 |
A dot marks the stronger side of a row, where there is one.
02 In short
Which to use
Keep Excel for
- sample sheets, inventories, plate maps and budgets;
- work shared with people who do not install anything new;
- files that many people edit at the same time.
Use Dioptra for
- the step from instrument export to statistics and figure, where errors are easiest to miss;
- tests that need post hoc comparisons, nonparametric alternatives, curve fits or survival curves;
- figures sized for a journal, without rebuilding them in another program.
Dioptra opens .xlsx, .xls and .ods files directly, at the precision they were stored, and exports any table back to XLSX or CSV.
03 Sources
Sources
Try it on your own data
Dioptra is free for any use, with no account. Install it next to what you use now and run one experiment through both.