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  • Glossary

Data Sets

Data sets are collections of archaeological artifacts (or assemblages) which you wish to seriate. In OptiPath, a file refers to a permanent database file retained on your computer which holds all of the data for all your data sets and seriations. A data set refers to a single set, or sample, of archaeological artifacts which you are trying to seriate. You may have many data sets (for example, separate data sets for Hohokam pottery, Hawai'ian fish hooks and Inuit spear points), but they can all reside in a single file (for example, OptiPath.ops).

Data Sets Menu

Show/Hide Table allows you to open/close the Data Sets table and create, delete, select and edit the data sets and edit their parameters.

Import allows you to import a data set from either a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet or a tab delimited text text file.

Export allows you to export a data set to a text file.

Help will bring up this documentation.

Data Sets Table

In the Data Sets table you may add, edit and delete data sets. Only the active data set can be edited, other rows are greyed out. Right clicking on the table will bring up a pop up menu of available actions. There are a number of attributes associated with each data set:

Active indicates the active data set. OptiPath allows you to create a number of data sets. The Active data set indicates the current data set, the one you are working with now. The data you look at in the various tables are always from the active data set. You may reload an old data set to examine its seriations by setting it to be the active data set. When you create a new data set it automatically becomes the active data set. To deactivate the current data set you can reactivate an old one or create a new one.

Data Set is a name that uniquely identifies the data set. Data set names are restricted to 50 characters. The data set name is required for each data set. You may change the name of a data set at any time, as long as you do not try to give it the same name as another data set.

Description is an optional description that can be entered for each data set. There is no limit to the length of a description.

Author is an optional field where you can record the name of the person who is creating the data set. This is useful for historical purposes when you come back and look at a large number of data sets in your file and wonder who did what.

Source is an optional field where you can record the source of the data. This is useful for documenting seriations.

Created is an information field which gives the date the data set was created. This is useful for historical purposes when you come back and look at a large number of data sets in your file and are looking for a data set created at a particular time. This field is read only (indcated by navy blue entries); it cannot be modified.