One might wonder if the "Excel error" was indeed THAT or perhaps a way to
get the desired results, give the other issues in their analysis?


On Wed, Apr 24, 2013 at 11:58 AM, peter dalgaard <pdalgd@gmail.com> wrote:

> In case you haven't noticed, this is making the rounds in the media,
> including a handful of references to R. See e.g.
>
>
> http://news.slashdot.org/story/13/04/17/0215211/excel-error-contributes-to-problems-with-austerity-study
>
> I suppose we can't fortune()'ify anonymous quotes, but I kind of like this
> exchange:
>
> "Bacon Bits": "SPSS and R are very good at statistical analysis. Quantrix,
> MapleSoft, IBM Algorithmics, and other software is for financial data
> modeling. None of those is particularly appropriate for sharing data in a
> useful format with peers. Excel is."
>
> "Hatta": "R is extremely appropriate for sharing data in a useful format
> with peers. It's completely free for one. But more importantly, it saves
> every single step of your analysis. Send someone an Excel file, and who
> knows what they've done to the data. Send someone your R project directory
> and they can see exactly what you did.
>
> The problem with sending R files to your peers isn't that the R files
> aren't useful. It's that your peers aren't."
>
>
>
>
> On Apr 16, 2013, at 19:25 , Sarah Goslee wrote:
>
> > Given that we occasionally run into problems with comparing Excel
> > results to R results, and other spreadsheet-induced errors, I thought
> > this might be of interest.
> >
> >
> http://www.nextnewdeal.net/rortybomb/researchers-finally-replicated-reinhart-rogoff-and-there-are-serious-problems
> >
> > The punchline:
> >
> > "If this error turns out to be an actual mistake Reinhart-Rogoff made,
> > well, all I can hope is that future historians note that one of the
> > core empirical points providing the intellectual foundation for the
> > global move to austerity in the early 2010s was based on someone
> > accidentally not updating a row formula in Excel."
> >
> > Ouch.
> >
> > (Note: I know nothing about the site, the author of the article, or
> > the study in question. I was pointed to it by someone else. But if
> > true: highly problematic.)
> >
> > Sarah
> >
> > --
> > Sarah Goslee
> > http://www.functionaldiversity.org
> >
> > ______________________________________________
> > 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.
>
> --
> Peter Dalgaard, Professor
> Center for Statistics, Copenhagen Business School
> Solbjerg Plads 3, 2000 Frederiksberg, Denmark
> Phone: (+45)38153501
> Email: pd.mes@cbs.dk  Priv: PDalgd@gmail.com
>
> ______________________________________________
> 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.
>

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