[R] Excel (off-topic, sort of)

[Philippe Grosjean]

Take a look at Mathematica or Maple. This is the kind of thing you do 
with these languages.
Best,

Philippe Grosjean


Alberto Monteiro wrote:
> Chris wrote:
>> Typically, people in the R community are not used to the spreadsheet 
>> paradigm and need some time to be able to take advantage of 
>> automatic recalculation, (...)
>>
> Do you know what's in my wish list?
> 
> I wish spreadsheets and computer languages had gone one
> step further.
> 
> I mean, it's nice to define Cell X to be "equal" to
> Cell Y + 10, and then when we change Cell Y, magically we
> see Cell X change.
> 
> But why can't it be the reverse? Why can't I change Cell X
> _and see the change in Cell Y_?
> 
> Maybe I'll write a letter to Santa Claus [there are people
> who write to congressman; they must have more faith than me].
> I wish a language where I can write
> 
>   a = b + 10
> 
> and then when I write
> 
>   a = 20
> 
> the language automatically assigns b = 10.
> 
> There's a way to simulate this in any computer language, or even
> in Excel: instead of "variables" or "cells", we have structures
> with value and a flag. The flag dictates if it's input, undefined
> or calculated. And then there's a list of relations. So the
> program/language/spreadsheed loops through the list of relations,
> detects whenever we can infer a new calculated value, and calculates
> it, until there's nothing else to do or a contradiction is found.
> 
> Alberto Monteiro
> 
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