Bert,
 
What you are saying - is a problem with people who are using Excel. It is not Excel's problem that people are sending data in an unstructured way. I agree - Excel may not be the right tool when you are doing some complicated data analysis (like for e.g. statistical modeling) - but that is not what Excel was built for. The power of Excel lies in being able to use it to explore data, represent and present your analysis. When exploring data, yes it may not be very useful beyond univariates and bivariates - but that is your starting point in EDA where you need to generate hypotheses about your data. 
 
I have been in the field of analytics for almost 7 years now, though we have embraced technologies like SAS, R, SPSS, Spotfire, etc., the power and importance of Excel in our lives has never been lost to us. Its a question of whether are you capable enough to use it.
 
Regards,
Indrajit
 


________________________________
From: Bert Gunter <gunter.berton@gene.com>

Cc: Rolf Turner <rolf.turner@xtra.co.nz> 
Sent: Sunday, April 22, 2012 11:07 AM
Subject: Re: [R] introducing R to high school students

I would like to slightly clarify and echo  Rolf's comment:

Excel is a terrible tool for data analysis. Maybe it's a good tool for
keeping track of your car's repair history... but not for data
analysis.

I could go on at great length why, but let me just focus on one aspect
that drives me and other statisticians in my group crazy when we deal
with scientists who send us data in Excel: the data are frequently a
mess!  By this I mean that they are often stored in crazy ways, with
plots and summaries sprinkled around, capital letters and small
letters mixed, missing values coded arbitrarily e.g.(99999 ), and so
forth. As someone I know once commented, it's a puzzle to get the data
extracted in a form susceptible to analysis.

Why is this? -- because Excel enforces no structure. It's
**cell-based** (duhhhh), so users can throw in the data anyway they
see fit, which frequently is pretty unfit.

This is not just a minor issue, imho. Not having data in a reasonable
structure limits what one can do for data analysis and graphics. This
promulgates the inadequate and frequently awful paradigms that one
sees throughout science (e.g. bar charts with 1 se bars sticking up
out of them).

The widespread use of Excel for "serious' scientific and engineering
data analysis is a near  tragedy. All IMHO, of course.

Cheers,
Bert

On Sat, Apr 21, 2012 at 9:45 PM, Indrajit Sengupta

> Why do you think Excel is a terrible tool? In what ways have you tried to use Excel and it has failed you?
>
> Regards,
> Indrajit
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: Rolf Turner <rolf.turner@xtra.co.nz>
>
> Cc: R-help <R-help@r-project.org>
> Sent: Sunday, April 22, 2012 9:25 AM
> Subject: Re: [R] introducing R to high school students
>
> On 22/04/12 15:29, Indrajit Sengupta wrote:
>
> <SNIP>
>> 1. At school we seldom deal with lot of data - the focus is more on concepts. Excel is an excellent tool
>     That is at best debatable, and IMHO just plain incorrect.  I firmly believe
>     that Excel is a ***TERRIBLE*** tool.
>> and no matter how much we love or hate it - we will be using Excel a lot in our lives.
>
>     This is not (unfortunately IMHO) debatable.  It is all too sadly true.  For most
>     people at least.  (Not for my very good self.  I can get away with eschewing
>     Excel.  Most people are not lucky enough to have that option.)
>
> <SNIP>
>
>     I think much of the remainder of the post was highly disputable as well,
>     but I will desist at this point.
>
>         cheers,
>
>             Rolf Turner
>        [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-help@r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>



-- 

Bert Gunter
Genentech Nonclinical Biostatistics

Internal Contact Info:
Phone: 467-7374
Website:
http://pharmadevelopment.roche.com/index/pdb/pdb-functional-groups/pdb-biostatistics/pdb-ncb-home.htm
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