Over the course of the past 3-4 years, I have been using spreadsheets (mainly Excel) for many things ranging from homework to personal tasks to research projects. At first, I could only use it to store data-sets and some basic highlighting and charts. Then I started to work with functions and basic analysis of data as my studies required me to do so. Moreover, report generation, large-scale calculations on data-sets, some statistical analysis and finally, basic homework tasks (yes! homework, and it helped a lot!) came into play. There are many other usages to spreadsheets though; For example, project/time management.
All of these things can be done by using a specialized program (for example, R for statistics) but the thing is, when you have to do something quickly and write/generate reports the same time, nothing beats the ease of using a spreadsheet. I agree that if I get skilled in R, I can do far more advanced statistical analysis but working with specialized software needs much more learning time.
Bottom line, if Excel has the functionality that I need for a specific task, there is no doubt I will stick to Excel and nothing else (maybe just a word processor if I need to write an article for it as well).
What are your thoughts on the matter of spreadsheets? Do you use them at all?
All of these things can be done by using a specialized program (for example, R for statistics) but the thing is, when you have to do something quickly and write/generate reports the same time, nothing beats the ease of using a spreadsheet. I agree that if I get skilled in R, I can do far more advanced statistical analysis but working with specialized software needs much more learning time.
Bottom line, if Excel has the functionality that I need for a specific task, there is no doubt I will stick to Excel and nothing else (maybe just a word processor if I need to write an article for it as well).
What are your thoughts on the matter of spreadsheets? Do you use them at all?
1 Comments On This Entry
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CTphpnwb
09 May 2014 - 03:55 PM
Depending on the project, a spreadsheet can be useful for prototyping. They're great for mathematical models for example. You set up a simple example that allows you to confirm that all the math is right before coding it for "real".
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