Thursday, December 13, 2007
'Tis the season to be hungover
I'm just recovering from the first of many work christmas parties coming up. I have done naff all work today, just prepped a couple of samples to use tomorrow. I am secretly hoping that the stuff I ordered ages ago and which are essential to my experiments won't arrive until the new year now, otherwise I will feel obliged to work like a crazy fool in the lab and behave myself at the upcoming christmas meals.
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Data Details
I thought I'd jump on the bandwagon and write about how I save and compile all my experimental data. I am do some experimental work in 3 different departments using quite different techniques. The main bulk of my experimental work is done in one department with the odd bit of sample prep (which can be quite complicated and detailed) in the other departments. I could keep separate notebooks for each department but I prefer to keep everything together (the way I see it is there is less risk of losing and misplacing one of them and only realising just as I am mid experiment or something).
I am fairly good at keeping my lab book up to date but it is never very detailed. My predominant experimental technique is quite straightforward and the experimental conditions do not change from experiment to experiment (I run lots of different samples using the same method). I am not keen on sticking in graphs of my data as it just makes my lab book big and bulgy and I don't think it's ever very relevant to just look at a single graph, my data comes into its own when compared with the whole data series. My lab book is most useful as a reminder of anything unusual which I observed and prompts to myself during the experiment - usually something along the lines of 'I am a moron, remember to keep the reference electrode properly protected next time'
I take a lot more time organising my data and experimental files on my computer. I have now taken to writing up all my experimental details for the day in an excel sheet (which is essentially an electronic copy of what I would note down in my lab book). I usually process all my data from the days experiment quite promptly and paste all the important data into a new excel file (and sometimes also an origin file depending on the exact type of experiment), usually just saved by the date of the experiment. I then have a big ass excel sheet which is a summary of all experimental work I've ever done, listed in chronological order and with hyperlinks to all the processed data files and which also summarises all the main experimental parameters I've measured and any other pertinent notes. It's so easy to just open up a single file to check what day I did a particular experiment and then directly find the raw data and whatever. I was quite happy the other day when my supervisor praised my organisation of my data and stuff. It's a skill I really learnt when I was finishing off my thesis and had a nightmare tracking down old data I needed to re-process or reformat.
I am also a big fan of neatly writing up detailed protocols for the particular experiments I do which I can easily send to any other members of the group who want to try and repeat one of my techniques. Also it's really handy for going back into labs when doing experiments and procedures which I do quite infrequently and is much easier than finding the particular page in a lab book when I first did the protocol which gets grubbier and more battered each time I go and repeat it. Also after mislaying my lab books one summer I like to have an electronic back up of absolutely everything.
I am fairly good at keeping my lab book up to date but it is never very detailed. My predominant experimental technique is quite straightforward and the experimental conditions do not change from experiment to experiment (I run lots of different samples using the same method). I am not keen on sticking in graphs of my data as it just makes my lab book big and bulgy and I don't think it's ever very relevant to just look at a single graph, my data comes into its own when compared with the whole data series. My lab book is most useful as a reminder of anything unusual which I observed and prompts to myself during the experiment - usually something along the lines of 'I am a moron, remember to keep the reference electrode properly protected next time'
I take a lot more time organising my data and experimental files on my computer. I have now taken to writing up all my experimental details for the day in an excel sheet (which is essentially an electronic copy of what I would note down in my lab book). I usually process all my data from the days experiment quite promptly and paste all the important data into a new excel file (and sometimes also an origin file depending on the exact type of experiment), usually just saved by the date of the experiment. I then have a big ass excel sheet which is a summary of all experimental work I've ever done, listed in chronological order and with hyperlinks to all the processed data files and which also summarises all the main experimental parameters I've measured and any other pertinent notes. It's so easy to just open up a single file to check what day I did a particular experiment and then directly find the raw data and whatever. I was quite happy the other day when my supervisor praised my organisation of my data and stuff. It's a skill I really learnt when I was finishing off my thesis and had a nightmare tracking down old data I needed to re-process or reformat.
I am also a big fan of neatly writing up detailed protocols for the particular experiments I do which I can easily send to any other members of the group who want to try and repeat one of my techniques. Also it's really handy for going back into labs when doing experiments and procedures which I do quite infrequently and is much easier than finding the particular page in a lab book when I first did the protocol which gets grubbier and more battered each time I go and repeat it. Also after mislaying my lab books one summer I like to have an electronic back up of absolutely everything.
Labels: lab stuff
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