When you double-click a collection, its inspector appears as a separate window floating above the document. The inspector shows you the names of the case attributes and allows you to step through the collection one case at a time. There is a lot you can do in an inspector. To name just a few: edit the values; add, delete, and rename attributes; add, delete, and rename measures; create and edit the collection's comments; change how the cases look; control the size of a sample; and turn sampling animation on or off.
Some other objects, such as graphs and sliders, have inspectors as well. Only one inspector appears on your screen at a time.
An inspector has panels, with each giving you control over a related set of characteristics of the object you are inspecting. The tabs at the top of the inspector let you select the panel to work in. Which panels are available in a given inspector depends on the state of the object being inspected. Following is a list of panels that you may encounter in Fathom, with a brief description of their purpose and a link to a more complete description of that panel's functionality.
This panel looks at individual cases in a collection and gives you control over case attributes. |
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This panel gives you the ability to define measures (see Define a Measure) for a collection. |
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Each collection has a Comments panel that you can use to describe the collection's origin and purpose. |
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In addition to attributes that you define, cases in a collection always have a set of attributes that control how they are displayed in an open collection. You can use these attributes to change the position, size, image, and caption of the cases formulaically (see Change the Appearance of Cases in a Collection Use As Caption). |
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A category set can be assigned to one or more attributes to define the valid values for those attributes (see Attributes with Category Sets). In the Categories panel, you can see the list of currently defined category sets and edit the categories and their order. (See Control Behavior of Categorical Attributes Using Category Sets.) |
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When you import data from a Web site or from a file, the Import panel allows you to go back to that location and re-import the data. |
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When you import census microdata from the IPUMS site, you use this panel to specify which cases to get and which attributes the cases should have. The panel sticks with the collection to help make it easy to go back and modify your request. (See Import U.S. Census Microdata from IPUMS.) |
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Sampling cases from a collection creates a sample collection whose inspector has a panel that gives you control over the sampling process (see Sampling Simulations). |
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Collecting measures from a collection creates a measures collection whose inspector has a panel that gives you control over the collecting process (see Collect Measures and Other Results). |
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Scrambling the attribute values in a collection creates a new collection whose inspector has a panel that lets you specify which attribute should be the one whose values are scrambled. (See Use Scrambling to Test for Independence.) |
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The inspector of a collection that is made by stacking the attributes of another collection has a panel that allows you to assign your own names to the group and value attributes in the stacked collection. |
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A graph's inspector has a panel that gives you control over many of the details of the graph's layout, such as the axis bounds, the width of a histogram's bins, and whether Fathom will automatically rescale an axis to include all the data. |
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A slider's inspector has a properties panel that gives you control over such things as how fast the slider animates, the slider axis bounds, and the formula for the slider value. |
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The inspector for a multiple regression model object has a Cases panel that includes the attributes for the source collection and attributes derived by the regression model (such as predicted values and residuals), making them available for looking at in graphs and summary tables. (See Multiple Regression.) |
Key Curriculum Press/Key College Publishing www.keypress.com/fathom |