@Preben Alsholm  Thanks - this is great.

@Preben Alsholm - thank you for you additional time considering this.

@Preben Alsholm - that's great information - many thanks

@Carl Love  - great thank you

Thanks @Carl Love - using a random seed had been my original plan but searching "random seed maple" on google didn't get me anywhere and I scavenged the GenerateGaussian code from someone else and so I didn't look up the help file for it. 

That said - I do want them to be able to generate and save data frames as it is useful for them to be able to export to other packages. I will likely use a mix of the blank csv and your suggested 'seed'. Thanks

Jo

Thanks @Daniel Skoog 

I found a fix by adding in a series of named blanks csv files - the data can be saved to these within the workbook using the Export command - it seems it is simply unable to create them. The savelib option also looks handy so thank you.

Jo

@Markiyan Hirnyk  Thank you - I did google but didn't follow through to the pages as I hadn't made the 'studentized connection'

Many thanks

Jo

@acer  Regarding the CSV file I've clicked on the button showing a green arrow but it says 'you cannot select a .csv file try again'. I see other posts do include a csv so I'm either doing something wrong or there's something about the mac file it doesn't like. I am new to MaplePrimes so perhaps there's a method for uploading that I'm missing - apologies for my numptiness.

Thank you again @Daniel Skoog - this just isn't working for my own CSV file - I wonder if it something about the fact that the file is saved as MS-DOS csv from my Excel for Mac?

Thank you @tomleslie. I appreciate that there are a number of ways around the problem but I am teaching biology students and sometimes the dataframes can be quite complex. I was hoping to avoid turning things into Matrices as it's easier to keep track of the column headings. The help file indicates that you can simply use dataframe column names - but this doesn't work. 

The various work arounds that have been suggested are all feasible - thanks to all. I feel - for my purposes - that making new vectors out of the columns - that can again have column 'styled' names e.g. DF(x) vs X:=convert(DF[x], Vector); followed by using those new vectors in some format e.g. dataplot(X,Y);  is the simplest option and allows students to be sure of what they are plotting.

Jo

Yes @Daniel Skoog I am using Maple 2018 on a Mac (in case that makes a difference).

One oddity I've noticed is that if I want to refer to a colum I would use DF[column_name] normally - correct?

If I do this the DataSummary command the error seems to suggest it is looking for a row label but if I type:

DataSummary(DF(column_name)); 

Jo

@tomleslie I agree - this is why I spent so long looking for what I was doing wrong. The helpfile says it is possible but the dataplot doesn't recognise any variant of code I've tried e.g. DF[column name], DF(column name), with(DF) then using just the name of the column....I wonder if it's a glitch?

Incidentally, I receive the same error if I try to use the Dataframe in LinearFit, whilst it works fine in DataSummary

Thank you @Carl Love great to have options

Thank you @Daniel Skoog,

I have spent hours hunting around to figure out my error - just tried with scatterplot and all is well - thank you for saving the remainder of my hair.

Jo

@tomleslie  Many thanks for this solution. It's also nice to know I wasn't just being plain stupid.