I do not endorse the accidental plug for google in here, but am all for the last line of the article (i.e., use the...
I do not endorse the accidental plug for google in here, but am all for the last line of the article (i.e., use the right software for the job). Or, better yet, stop using spreadsheets as databases. Gasp! People using Excel as a database drove our statisticians and other people crazy.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/08/26/an-alarming-number-of-scientific-papers-contain-excel-errors/?tid=hybrid_collaborative_3_na
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/08/26/an-alarming-number-of-scientific-papers-contain-excel-errors/?tid=hybrid_collaborative_3_na
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/08/26/an-alarming-number-of-scientific-papers-contain-excel-errors/?tid=hybrid_collaborative_3_na
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/08/26/an-alarming-number-of-scientific-papers-contain-excel-errors/?tid=hybrid_collaborative_3_na
I saw this and laughed and laughed and then cried.
ReplyDeleteI used to use Excel for databases because there was literally no other sane way to do it available to me. That said, it was mostly awful and only worked if you were incredibly anal about getting all the fiddly bits the same. Which, okay, I was, but that didn't make it less annoying.
ReplyDeleteYeah. Computer literacy is not something you need to work in academia or research. It was particularly incomprehensible where I was with the resources available at that institution. They not only had professional statisticians, Bayesian and frequentist, they had professional database designers and admins - with fancy degrees, and experience, and stuff! (Every one of these people I worked with or interacted with was highly competent. People ignoring them was just painful.)
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