On Sat, Aug 27, 2016 at 1:15 AM, Hollister, Jeff <[email protected]> wrote: > Emily, > > > I think a lot of the auto conversion can be dealt with using the data > validation tools in excel. I've used it fairly successfully to constrain > data entry in Excel files that are being shared across many people with a > large variance in data and computer skills. At this point, Excel is really > the only option (until we have time to set up a database with online data > entry). > > For the gene example, you could set up a drop down list of acceptable gene > names.
Where appropriate, for simple-enough data entry, I would use Google Forms. That can do a pretty decent job of constraining and validating inputs, and storing them as the correct types. Of course, that can only go so far for anything reasonably complex. Beyond that I think Excel (or other spreadsheets) are fine--the only problem is that the default settings may not be appropriate and that's where people are running into trouble. And of course the default settings may be terrible for a biologist, but just right for, say, an accounting clerk or something. Maybe one thing Excel or LibreOffice could do to improve the situation is have several broad classes of "user profiles" one can select when first starting it that will set more appropriate defaults. To an extent a template can serve this purpose but you have to make sure to manually select a template whenever starting a new workbook. I like the idea of having broad defaults that are more appropriate for science or engineering, than for accounting or the like. > Message: 4 > Date: Fri, 26 Aug 2016 15:02:06 -0700 > From: Emily Jane McTavish <[email protected]> > To: Software Carpentry Discussion > <[email protected]> > Subject: Re: [Discuss] Excel errors.... > Message-ID: <[email protected]> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed > > Great points. > > I have a question about alternatives to excel for data input. > > Following this paper I have seen a lot of 'never use Excel' tweets, but > that seems to be ignoring a key step in real world data analysis > pipelines. If data is not coming straight off a machine, such as in > ecological surveys, behavioral experiments, meta-analyses of gene names, > etc., those data need to be put into a tabular, machine readable, format > (e.g. CSV) somehow. I don't think anyone is recommending using a text > editor to do that. > Libre office calc and google sheets have many of the same autoformat > issues as Excel. (although that may be fixed in new versions of libre > office?) > > I think when people say 'don't use excel', they often mean 'for > analysis', or 'for statistics'. But this paper demonstrates it is > problematic for even simple data input. I know what to recommend as > alternatives in the former cases, but not for the latter. Am I missing > good alternative options here? > > > Thanks, > Emily Jane > > -- > Emily Jane McTavish > Assistant Professor > School of Natural Sciences > University of California, Merced > 5200 N. Lake Rd, Merced CA 95343 > [email protected], [email protected] > > > > *************************************** > > _______________________________________________ > Discuss mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.software-carpentry.org/listinfo/discuss _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.software-carpentry.org/listinfo/discuss
