On Thu, May 5, 2016 at 9:45 AM, Waldman, Simon <[email protected]> wrote: >> -----Original Message----- >> From: C. Titus Brown [mailto:[email protected]] >> Sent: 05 May 2016 14:41 >> To: Waldman, Simon <[email protected]> >> Cc: [email protected] >> Subject: Re: [Discuss] Word and PowerPoint "all wrong"? >> > > The fact of the matter is, Excel has been demonstrated time and >> > > again to be not just inefficient for scientific analysis but usually >> > > out-and- >> out wrong. >> > >> > [citation needed] >> >> Here's one that has had a reasonably significant impact on biology: >> >> http://bmcbioinformatics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2105-5- >> 80 > > Interesting, thank you. I'm not sure that's so much "Excel is wrong" as > "Excel was allowed to make a guess at a data type, and guessed wrong" - but > it certainly has the same effect for the unwary. Worth being aware of. >
This is a list of errors in statistical calculations in Excel, with citations: http://statisticalengineering.com/Weibull/excel.html But, more important than that, is that Excel makes it easier to make errors and harder to detect errors. There's the famous Reinhart and Rogoff case, as just one example: http://www.peri.umass.edu/236/hash/31e2ff374b6377b2ddec04deaa6388b1/publication/566 One error was a simple drag-select mistake. Having watched people use Excel for many years, it's surprising to me that these errors don't happen more often than they do. I remember being terrified at my colleague's explanation of the work she was doing by column dragging and and spreadsheet tab manipulation, and I knew her to be a very careful scientist. I wouldn't worry too much about that, if I did not have a very clear idea of my own ability to make silly mistakes, I lesson I largely learned from testing my own code [1]. So, if I have data or analysis where the potential for error is low, or the cost of error is low, then I would consider using Excel. If I want to be able to track the entire calculation, read it, debug it and test it, I need a tool that is designed to do that. Best, Matthew [1] http://blog.nipy.org/ubiquity-of-error.html _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.software-carpentry.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss_lists.software-carpentry.org
