Volunteers needed : turning the AMS data into charts

From Eureka

The AMS survey of journal prices contains pricing data for 275 math journals. It stores the total price and number of pages for each journal, roughly from 1994 to 2006. It is available as an Excel spreadsheet.

We want to include this data as a chart in the page for each journal, go to Template:Journal Info Template Test to see how it's going to look. To do this, we use the spreadsheet and make a chart for each journal, and save each chart as an image file, and upload this to Eureka. The Journal Info template will then include this image (if it exists) into the journal's page.

For instance, here's the image created for Experimental Mathematics. It's already on Eureka, as [[Image:AMS Chart Experimental Mathematics.png]]  :

It's a bit of drudgework to get everything uploaded, but the whole system is already setup, and volunteers are welcome to lend a hand!

Important : if you don't like the way the charts look - complain quickly, before the rest of us load them up! ;-) See the bottom of this page to see how many have been done so far.

Contents 1 What a volunteer - who has Excel - needs to do 2 Chart images which have been done already 3 Pledges 4 Complaining Quickly

What a volunteer - who has Excel - needs to do

• Download the Excel spreadsheet (with the charts built in) at this address.

• Go to this page, scroll down to "The Change Series Formula Utility" and follow the steps there, to install a visual basic macro into Excel.

• Download an image viewer - I strongly recommend Irfanview. Load it up.

• Now you're ready to begin. Look at the bottom of this wiki to see which journals you can "do", and which have already been done by other people. Don't want to do it twice!

• Scroll across in the Excel file; at about BW5 you'll see two charts. These are the same kind of chart, it's just that the top one has question marks placed lower down, for some journals it will look better. The question marks are there since the AMS data doesn't include the number of pages for 2004 and 2006. (Ed : 2006 I can understand... but 2004?)

• Click on the lower chart, this is the one you'll use in "standard processing". Right click on some open space in the chart, choose "Source Data", and go to the "Series" tab. You'll notice there are 4 series (only two are displayed, this was a hack workaround). The important thing is the row number in the "Values: " field. To make the same chart for a new row number (i.e. a new journal), click on the the Change Series Formula toolbar and replace this old row number with a new one, e.g. enter "22" in the Find Old Text field and "23" in the Replace with New Text Field.

• If the new chart looks ok - i.e., half of it isn't blank or something because of weird data like n/a - then continue. If not, make a note of this journal, skip it and go to the next one. I'll deal with those trouble-causers personally at the end.

• For each ok-looking-journal-chart:

• Hold down shift, and click on Edit in the menu bar, and choose "Copy Picture".
• In the dialog box, select "As shown on screen", "As shown on screen", and "Bitmap".
• Go to your Irfanview window, and paste by pressing Ctrl+V or Edit-Paste.
• Make a selection box around the image. It must be as tight as possible! Then choose Edit-crop.
• Choose "Save as", and name it "AMS Chart Journal X" where Journal X is the full name of the journal, correctly capitalized, as obtained from the listings in Category:Mathematics journals.
• Make sure you are saving as type "PNG - Portable Network Graphics". Tick "Show options dialog", and check the box "Save Transparent Colour" in the PNG section. Then click Save. You'll be asked to choose the transparent colour - click on any white part of the image.

Chart images which have been done already

• row 2 -> row 17 (Experimental Mathematics to Journal of Computer and System Sciences).

All of them; see Journal Price Survey charts.

Pledges

You can make a "pledge" to do some range of journals. It can be done in your own time; when they get added to Eureka the journal page will automatically start displaying them, via the Journal Info template.

• row 18 -> row 100 (Journal of Differential Equations to Russian Journal of Mathematical Physics) - Bruce Bartlett.

Complaining Quickly

Blake told us to "complain quickly" if we didn't like the charts. I like the charts! But, on the Experimental Mathematics test page, the box on containing the chart somehow pushes the text of the article way down below the box.

Is there any way to avoid this evil effect? There must be!

Actually, now that I'm warmed up: here's a complaint about the charts. Is there any good reason time is running from right to left? To the naive reader, it looks like journal prices are declining exponentially. The only people I know who have time run from right to left are paleontologists.

--John Baez 13:39, 5 September 2007 (EDT)

Hi John, great to have complaints! I'm slightly puzzled by that evil effect you mention. It certainly is evil... but I don't think it happens on my computer. You mean the box is not "floating" on the right, but rather it just sits there, and the rest of the text is forced to go below it? Are you using Firefox? It shouldn't matter, of course, mmm. Does that also happen on the K-Theory page?

Good point about time running the wrong way. Funny thing that, I never noticed it... that's funny. Right - that must be fixed. --Brucebartlett 14:50, 5 September 2007 (EDT)

Agreed about time running backwards. As for the non-floating: for me, Experimental Mathematics and K-Theory pages are fine, but the Journal Info Prototype isn't. The info box sits on the left, then beneath it comes the first piece of text ("This is a static prototype..."). I'm using Firefox 1.5.0.10 on Linux. --Tleinster 18:56, 5 September 2007 (EDT)

Thanks, I fixed the bug in Journal Info Prototype. Actually, officially that page is now deprecated (I always wanted to say that). --Brucebartlett 20:43, 5 September 2007 (EDT)

For some reason now the Experimental Mathematics and K-theory page is working fine for me now. Must be the hobgoblins infesting this flat.

I'm glad it's not too late to get time running forwards again!

Thanks again for all the miracles you all are working. Alas, I don't have Microsoft Excel, so I may not be able to contribute to this particular sort of work. But, there's no shortage of things to do.

By the way, describing this as 'drudge work' on the main page may not be the most effective advertising campaign. If we're not swamped with volunteers in a couple days, we may need to hire an expensive marketing firm to come up with a better phrase. Or maybe I'll just think of one myself. --John Baez 05:25, 6 September 2007 (EDT)