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Designing a Flexible Mathematica Program for Data Analysis

• To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
• Subject: [mg74690] Designing a Flexible Mathematica Program for Data Analysis
• From: "5000brians" <5000brians at gmail.com>
• Date: Sat, 31 Mar 2007 01:37:12 -0500 (EST)

I'm using Mathematica to perform data analysis for a project I've been
working on for a few years. I have written quite a bit of Mathematica
code for automating the task of analyzing the data.

As time goes by, the type of data I collect changes slightly. I'm
looking for a way for the various data set types I have to happily
coexist within a single Mathematica session so I can compare and
contrast all the data with a minimum of fuss.

Let's say I want to create a plot of dataset 1 and dataset 2. In both
cases, I want the same thing, a plot of parameter a versus parameter
b. And let's say I have a bunch of code already written and it works
just fine for dataset 1. But, dataset 2 is newer, and the data format
is slightly different. The parameters a and b mean the same thing in
both cases, it's just that they are represented differently in dataset
2 than in dataset 1.

And let's say I have the following functions:
readDataset: opens the text file and puts dataset into memory
generateAandB: based on the data in the dataset, creates a list of
parameters a and b for a dataset
plotAandB: creates a plot of a vs b.

In this case, I probably need two versions of readDataset and
generateAandB, one for each of my dataset types. If I am using a
List[], I am probably ok with one plotAandB function.

But how can I automate this solution? What if I want to read in 30
datasets with 10 different dataset types?

I can't do plotAandB[generateAandB[readDataset[#]]]& /@
listOfDatasets, because I need 10 different generateAandBs and 10
different readDatasets.

How can I make my code "datatype aware"?

I know this is a bit long winded - sorry about that.

Thanks for any help,
Brian