Week 13: Excel Escapades

Graphs from my comparative study depicting the presence of concentric rings in quilt patterns and overall patterns over time.

For the comparative analysis, I used Microsoft Excel to organize data and SPSS to process data. A simple dataset of appurtenant information was entered into Excel, then exported to SPSS, which I used to add an additional field of sorting by decade. This is a royal pain in Excel, and one of the main reasons I switched to a different processing software. SPSS is also very useful for running frequencies and cross tabulating information. I created graphs depicting change over time of patterns, materials, forms, and sizes. I also made a graph of which quilts had concentric patterns over time. As mentioned previously, no significant patterns were found in these areas, which may be due to the small sample size of 30 quilts.

For the “mean fabric dating,” I entered each of the estimated date ranges for 11 of the 12 fabrics into Excel and used Stanley South’s method for finding a weighted average as we learned in our archaeology class. I also ran an unweighted average, to determine whether large volumes of a particular fabric were significantly pulling my date one way or the other. I also created a graph showing a count of fabric pieces and what decades each dated to, illustrating what decades most of the fabric was from.