Defining Groups
Open the Data manager by either pressing the Data manager button, or choosing Data Manager in the Tools menu, both found in the main window. Groups are sets of rows and you define the groups under the Groups tab in the Data manager. Groups can be helpful when you are selecting data for analysis, or plotting, and it is also used in some statistical methods such as the t-test. A row can be placed in more than one group.
A group is created by typing its Group name in the text box to the left in the Data manager, followed by pressing the upper Plus button or pressing enter. Data rows are added to a group by marking the group name in the upper left list box, selecting the rows that should belong to the group in the bottom right, and pressing the lower Plus button. The samples associated with a marked group are shown in the lower left list box. There are three ways of selecting the samples, each found under a separate tab in the bottom right: select by Rows, Class, or Paired.
Under the Rows tab open, you see a list box with all row labels. You can add one row at a time by selecting a row, pressing the bottom Plus button or enter, and repeating the procedure for the other samples that should belong to the same group. Or you can select multiple samples by holding down the Shift or Ctrl key while you are marking the rows and the Plus button only needs to be pressed once for each group.
If you want to select rows according to the data in some classification column you should use the Class tab instead. First, choose a column and a logical operand (equals to, larger than, etc.) in the drop-down lists. Then pick a value from the selected classification column from the bottom drop-down list and press the bottom Plus button. Pressing the button automatically places all rows that match the defined criteria in the marked group. If you e.g. choose values in column #A that are equal to 1, all rows that have a 1 in column #A will be added to the group when you press the Plus button. This is convenient when you have classification columns that separate e.g. sick and healthy samples and want to group by that.
If your data is paired, e.g. measurements before and after a treatment for each subject, it is important that the paired samples are sorted next to each other. This can be done by selecting rows under the Paired tab. Just as under the Class tab, select the classification columns that defines you grouping and one of its values. The rows that have the selected value in the selected classification column will be added to the marked group when the bottom Plus button is pressed. The last drop-down list defines which classification column that should define the ordering of the samples, i.e. the column that defines the pairs.
Rows are removed from a group by marking the group in the upper list box, then selecting the rows to remove in the lower list box, and pressing the lower Cross button. Groups can be deleted by marking the group in the upper list box and pressing the upper Cross button. You can rename a group by marking it, typing in the new name in the Group name text box, and pressing the Rename button.
When the grouping is complete, press the Apply button to store all the settings in the active data set.