The latest version of OriginPro—a review

No matter your area of research, a key component of any experimental or computational investigation is the analysis and presentation of your data. Most of us rely on one of three primary options—a simple, general package such as Excel; a mathematical programming system such as MATLAB; or a system dedicated solely to data analysis and graphing such as OriginPro. I have long used a combination of MATLAB and Excel, so when I began exploring the latest release of OriginPro, I was certainly an Origin amateur.

One critical aspect of data analysis, that in other packages I often feel is overly labor intensive, is fitting to a user-defined function. If I am faced with a theoretical function that is not a simple polynomial or other common function, finding best-fit values in many packages is far from straightforward.

That is one area where OriginPro certainly stands out from other options. It is very simple to define any function for data fitting and then quickly get fit parameters. I show such a fit generated in OriginPro to some of my data below.

The data points are the measured powers for a double-slit experiment with 40 μm slits spaced 200 μm apart. The line is the fit generated by the program (with the fit equation defined by me and the parameters found by OriginPro given in the box).

Anytime you fit to a curve with so many parameters (five are seen here), it is of course always possible to increase the R-squared value, so OriginPro automatically accounts for this with an adjusted R-squared.

Beyond the powerful curve-fitting options (both the user defined as well as a huge library of built-in functions), the most impressive feature of OriginPro is the vast array of graphing options. Think of a way you would like to present your data, and very likely it is possible in OriginPro. The ability to take a data set and create high-quality two-dimensional or three-dimensional plots with numerous options is unrivaled by any other package I have encountered.

Whether in a talk, poster, or paper, a key to getting your point across is the effective graphical presentation of the data. Although I’ve always made do with what I could achieve in other packages, both the simplicity and power of the graphing features in OriginPro have me exploring new options to let my data speak for itself in future work. Below is a very simple 3D surface plot representing grade correlation data from one of my recent courses.

As a final point, moving to OriginPro does not mean leaving other tools behind. It nicely integrates with LabVIEW, MATLAB, Excel, and others; exports graphics directly to Word and PowerPoint; and even allows internal simulations via Python or Origin C. Although it does take some time and effort to master all the many features and gadgets of OriginPro (something I have yet to accomplish), you can quickly become comfortable with the basics, and the additional time spent to learn the more advanced features can be well worth the investment.

Beyond the question of whether to adopt for use in research, there is also the question of use in teaching. I think for a program this involved, it is probably only worthwhile to add to the curriculum if you have a course that focuses very heavily on statistical data analysis, or if your department decides to add OriginPro as a common tool in a sequence of courses such that the uses and features can be introduced and reinforced over time.

For just a single course where graphing and statistical analysis is more a sideline than the primary focus, I would think the learning curve for OriginPro is too steep to justify adoption. Strong students could learn the needed features as they go, but I wouldn’t want most of my undergraduates focusing their time on learning such a package when they can already do basic things in Excel and have to learn MATLAB for several of our courses.

Whereas Excel has the advantages of essentially universal availability and ease of use, and MATLAB is extremely powerful for all things analytical, I do not feel that they (or any other package I have used) can match OriginPro when it comes to data analysis and graphical presentation. However, the other packages will always be in my regular rotation for their much broader uses.

In short, if you currently are using another package for data analysis and presentation and are satisfied with the results you get for your effort, then I’m not sure the transition would be worth it. But if you feel that your plots could be more visually stunning or your fits could be performed more seamlessly, it may be time to try OriginPro.

Sean Bentley is an associate professor of physics at Adelphi University in Garden City, New York.