Simple Database ConstructionUsing Local Sources of Data
D. Timothy Gerber, David M. Reineke · The American Biology Teacher · 2005
With the increased accessibility of information in our society, databases have become a common way to organize and distribute data. To best understand how information is organized in a database, students need to see firsthand how they are constructed. Construction of three simple databases using a spreadsheet is described here and basic summary statistics are provided for each. Recommendations for building simple databases using a computer spreadsheet and the statistical analysis of its data are given. Introduction: As in the above quote, information is truly all around us. Many of the informed decisions scientists, government officials, industrial analysts and others in our society make revolve around summarizing information amassed in large sets of data or databases. In biology, this information can range from human health (Kaiser, 2002) and genetic data (FIDD, 1999) to species descriptions (e.g., Guiry & Nic Dhonncha, 2002) to quantitative limnological data (e.g., NODC, 2001). Readily amenable to manipulation by computer and highly organized, databases and statistics are excellent tools for analyzing and summarizing quantitative measurements and are important for scientific interpretation/explanations of natural phenomena (NRC, 1996, p. 118).