[R] Staging area for data before read into R

[Ted Byers]

No.  Excel, like most spreadsheets, does what it designed for reasonably
well.  It is easy to find fault, but not so easy to satisfy all one's
critics.  There is no doubt that Excel has faults, but it provides
significant modelling and analysis capability to users with no programming
expertise or limited experience using IT.

I have used it as a teaching tool for very basic modelling to undergraduate
students who would not have been able to do any modelling without it.  In a
one session course, there just isn't time to teach students enough
programming in any language for them to have a hope of producing an
interesting model.  But they can produce an interesting model with some
guidance using Excel.  Similarly, they can do elementary data analysis
entering their data into Excel and using it to analyse it.

Excel was designed primarily for business people, and I have seen them use
it effectively, doing things I don't fully understand (as I am not a
businessman).  But these same people would go into a catatonic state the
moment a discussion becomes technical or mathematical.  They describe Excel
as powerful, and until I become an expert MBA type, I won't knock them for
that.  If they find it useful, why would I argue with them.  

Don't get me wrong, I do not normally use it, and for 99% of the work I do,
it provides no value to me, so I do not have it installed on my own systems. 
I am better served by C++, Java, and the related tools specific to my work. 
But that it isn't useful to me, or apparently you, is not sufficient grounds
to question its utility for others (neither is the existance of bugs, as ALL
software has bugs: MS makes for an easy target, but I try to be as fair to
them as I am to an independant developer who works alone - lets not have
this degenerate into an attack on MS, please).  As a software engineer
myself, I won't knock the work of another just because what he's produced
isn't particularly useful for me.  I won't even knock him if I don't agree
with the design decisions he's made.  When that happens, it is likely I was
not part of his intended market: nothing more can be implied.


Rolf Turner-3 wrote:
> 
> 
> On 22/10/2008, at 8:18 AM, Ted Byers wrote:
> 
> 	<snip>
> 
>> ... even with all the power and utility of Excel ...
> 
> 	<snip>
> 
> Is this some kind of joke?
> 
> 	cheers,
> 
> 		Rolf Turner
> 
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