HI Abdullah,

You said 'data crunching'. It looks like I should interpret that as 'counting and computing numbers'. If so, stick to Excel. Access is a database. Databases are about describing/modeling, categorising, searching and selecting data. Spreadsheets are the things of use if you actually want to count things and apply statistics.

That said, you could do it in Access - but it would take a considerable amount of additional VBA-scripting to get Access to count your phenomena properly. Excel should provide standard functions and solutions in most cases.

If you're talking about really vast amounts of data, consider using more advanced statistical tools like SPSS or Stata.

Hope this helps,
y.s.,
Joris van Zundert


On 10/29/06, Abdullah Alger <Abdullah.Alger-2@postgrad.manchester.ac.uk> wrote:
Dear all,

I would like to ask for advice whether I should use MS Access or Excel for data
crunching.  I have been using Excel for some work I am doing on Old English
poetry where I am looking at specific features of a fixed set of poems.
However, I have decided also to look at other aspects of the same set of poems.

To put it in a nutshell, I have three sets of data I want to compare concerning
the same poems in order to see where the trends are.  I know how to use Excel
fairly well - at least to get statistical information - but I have been getting
into trouble when trying to find trends across several sets of data.  I thought
about pivot tables, but I am not sure if that's the way to go, when I think
that I may be able to do things easier in Access - even though I don't know
anything about how to use it.

Which application would you suggest I use?

Best,
Abdullah Alger

_______________________________________________
Digital Medievalist Project
Homepage: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org
Journal (Spring 2005-): http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/journal.cfm
RSS (announcements) server: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/rss/rss2.cfm
Wiki: http://sql.uleth.ca/dmorgwiki/index.php
Change membership options: http://listserv.uleth.ca/mailman/listinfo/dm-l
Submit RSS announcement: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/newitem.cfm
Contact editorial Board: digitalmedievalist@uleth.ca
dm-l mailing list
dm-l@uleth.ca
http://listserv.uleth.ca/mailman/listinfo/dm-l



--
Mr. Joris J. van Zundert (MA)
Huygens Institute
Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences

Contact information can be found at http://www.brandaen.org

A disclaimer is applicable to this e-mail, please refer to http://www.brandaen.org/emaildisclaimer for more information