Analysis Tools

There is a steadily increasing number of powerful tools available to help with data collection, data cleaning and formatting, analysis, and presentation. Many are free. Here are a few that I have used and would recommend.

R (statistical programming language)My current weapon of choice – very powerful, with lots of packages to help with data preparation and analysis. Free to download from www.r-project.org.
Microsoft ExcelIndustry standard spreadsheet. Powerful and great for exploring and processing data.
GephiNetwork analysis software. Free from gephi.org
OpenRefineVery useful for cleaning up and deduplicating data before analysis. Free from openrefine.org
AntConcText analysis is an interesting field that has applications to musicology (analysing texts about music, song titles, lyrics, etc). AntConc is a fast and simple tool to analyse texts – word frequencies, collocation, etc. Freely available (with various other useful utilities) from www.laurenceanthony.net
WordCloudsA simple wordcloud generator. Online tool at www.wordclouds.com
QGISHugely powerful tool for everything to do with mapping. Available from www.qgis.org. The tutorial is well worth going through.

Gallery

R / ggplot2: Size of symphony orchestras during the nineteenth century
Gephi: Chart of nineteenth-century composer networks, coloured by nationality
Wordle: wordcloud of the first chapter of my thesis (note that wordle, used here, seems to have died – there are several alternatives).
Cite this article as: Gustar, A.J. 'Analysis Tools' in Statistics in Historical Musicology, 11th July 2017, https://musichistorystats.com/resources/analysis-tools/.