I'm reading all these responses about Excel's bugs and related research on them [the extensive nature of which might be due to everyone's dislike of it at least relative to bugs in more programmable environments......or potentially even to due to the spreadsheet nature [good GUI]] but in my experience....yes there are absolutely wrong things in Excel [only know of one maybe two] and it can act wonkily [as in I don't understand the protocols completely] but careful checking of all these things and keeping to DIY methods as much as possible [more of a problem if requiring statistical/logical analysis].....it's really useful for small data sets.
Even if I could program extensively....I'd still use for the experimental testing I did....though probably in a somewhat different way.....for visualization and checking purposes. Think the timing for data analysis and checking of data analysis works better in excel than other formats. The existence of jupyter notebooks is the only thing I've seen that might make my statement no longer the case. The main issue here on difference of opinion on Excel might be that others are doing very different types of research that what I've done in the past. On Thu, May 5, 2016 at 10:33 AM, Matthew Brett <[email protected]> wrote: > 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 >
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