Probes are available for position, speed, acceleration, force, pressure, rotation, pH, conductivity, temperature, light, magnetic field, colorimetery, and much more. Lab activities, which tend to be specific to a vendor's combination of hardware and software, are available from most vendors. Databases, Statistics, and Tabletop Graphing software and databases are, in many respects, complementary. Like graphers, databases are tools that help students build theories and understand observations, and they are particularly important when there are lots of observations. Databases are particularly useful when the data are categorical, when there are many possible variables, only some of which might be related, and when statistics is important due to high variability in the data.
Databases are under-utilized in schools, in part because of the fear so many have of statistics.
There are software tools that help students understand categorical data and make inferences without needing formal statistics even when the data has considerable random variability. Perhaps the most general and accessible are Tabletop and Tabletop Junior. The icons can be sorted by the values of their variables using logical functions or axes. As the sorting conditions change, the icons move smoothly into their new positions. The results are appealing and very revealing.