help with database software

[zbrooks]

I have an assignment for my modeling class that I need to use a spreadsheet to model population growth of different age classes of a species. Im looking for some kind of 3 dimensional spreadsheet because I need to do 100 trials for 10 years, and setting this up in a normal 2-d spreadsheet isnt realistic. If there isnt such a program i was thinking of writing a program to generate the data I need, but I am going to need to make box-plots and graphs and Im not really sure how to do that since I dont have a huge amount of programing experience. Any help would be greatly appreciated! thanks!

[WW]

I would use something like octave or scilab rather than a spreadsheet.

Is your model a Leslie matrix model? You say you must run 100 trials; are there random variables in your model?

[zbrooks]

Part of the project involves a Leslie Matrix but I used mathcad on our school computers to do that stuff. For this part I need to create a "stochastic age-structured model." We did a similar example using minitab, but it only involved 1 trial and only 3 age classes. I have to do 100 trials of 16 age classes now.

There are random variables for whether or not a catastrophe happens.

As for now ill give octave and scilab a try.