Rapid publication-ready MS-Word tables for one-way ANOVA

Abstract

Background: Statistical tables are an important component of data analysis and reports in biological sciences. However, the traditional manual processes for computation and presentation of statistically significant results using a letter-based algorithm are tedious and prone to errors. Results: Based on the R language, we present two web-based software for individual and summary data, freely available online, at http://shiny.stat.tamu.edu:3838/hassaad/Table_report1/ and http://shiny.stat.tamu.edu:3838/hassaad/SumAOV1/, respectively. The software are capable of rapidly generating publication-ready tables containing one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) results. No download is required. Additionally, the software can perform multiple comparisons of means using the Duncan, Student-Newman-Keuls, Tukey Kramer, and Fisher’s least significant difference (LSD) tests. If the LSD test is selected, multiple methods (e.g., Bonferroni and Holm) are available for adjusting p-values. Using the software, the procedures of ANOVA can be completed within seconds using a web-browser, preferably Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome, and a few mouse clicks. Furthermore, the software can handle one-way ANOVA for summary data (i.e. sample size, mean, and SD or SEM per treatment group) with post-hoc multiple comparisons among treatment means. To our awareness, none of the currently available commercial (e.g., SPSS and SAS) or open-source software (e.g., R and Python) can perform such a rapid task without advanced knowledge of the corresponding programming language. Conclusions: Our new and user-friendly software to perform statistical analysis and generate publication-ready MS-Word tables for one-way ANOVA are expected to facilitate research in agriculture, biomedicine, and other fields of life sciences.