Show HN: Dtab – Spreadsheet for Data Science • Hacker News Board

Re: Show HN: Dtab – Spreadsheet for Data Science

#31

Post by nebulous1 » Fri, Oct 02, 2015, 5:55 PM UTC

A couple of things I noticed:

No editbox for the contents of the currently selected cell? (I have to double click to see the formula)

One of the examples suggested I use dl.stdev(D2:D65). I think it actually meant D5, but in any case I noticed that it computed the stdev as if empty cells had zeroes in them, rather than ignore them which would be more the norm with spreadsheets.

I do like the idea of being able to import random javascript, could be very handy.

edit: also the drop down menu headings seem to stay highlighted when you click off them, but you probably knew that. 2nd edit: oh I see, it's if I click off them onto a blank part of the window

Re: Show HN: Dtab – Spreadsheet for Data Science

#32

Post by Zikes » Fri, Oct 02, 2015, 5:56 PM UTC

pikzen wrote: post #29

Zikes wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a typical office environment, everybody knows how to work with spreadsheets. They're a common interface and a great way to present and explore tabular data. But as soon as you put that data into an Excel document and hit Save, it's outdated. Somewhere, somebody in the office has a .xlsx file on their C: drive with the data you need, but that doesn't help you much, does it? Or somebody puts the data into a spreadsh…

But those people could be using Google Spreadsheet already for example, which would have already solved the problem. And people in the office are not going to be writing Javascript in their spreadsheet. It literally solves nothing.

Storing proprietary data in Google may not be viable. I know it isn't in my office, for instance. Plus, you lose the flexibility to integrate it into a more comprehensive application interface which runs on your own hardware/software stack, which the Javascript in this case provides.

I can already imagine several good uses for this software in my workplace, so saying it "literally solves nothing" is "literally false".

Re: Show HN: Dtab – Spreadsheet for Data Science

#33

Post by hliyan » Fri, Oct 02, 2015, 5:59 PM UTC

Quick idea:

How about providing numeric cell referencing, jQuery-style:

  $(1, 2) // row 1, col 2

Like it's done here: https://github.com/hliyan/magpie/blob/master/lib/gasp.gs

Re: Show HN: Dtab – Spreadsheet for Data Science

#34

Post by raymondgh » Fri, Oct 02, 2015, 6:02 PM UTC

This is great! A lot of useful spreadsheet functions are really esoteric and unintuitive. Would love to see this integrated with Google Sheets

Re: Show HN: Dtab – Spreadsheet for Data Science

#35

Post by abduhl » Fri, Oct 02, 2015, 6:06 PM UTC

Zikes wrote: post #28

pikzen wrote: post #8

Every single spreadsheet software has been able to do this for years, but using Javascript makes it better amirite? What makes this better than Excel (VBA, Python, probably half of the languages on the planet.), Libre Office, Google Spreadsheets, etc., aside from Javascript ? The only point I could see would be integrating this into a page, which is of dubious utility.

In a typical office environment, everybody knows how to work with spreadsheets. They're a common interface and a great way to present and explore tabular data. But as soon as you put that data into an Excel document and hit Save, it's outdated. Somewhere, somebody in the office has a .xlsx file on their C: drive with the data you need, but that doesn't help you much, does it? Or somebody puts the data into a spreadsh…

I'm sorry, what?

What does this product have that fixes the problem you're talking about here? How does working in a spreadsheet with javascript net you any better benefit than working with Excel with respect to obsolete sheets?

Re: Show HN: Dtab – Spreadsheet for Data Science

#36

Post by baldfat » Fri, Oct 02, 2015, 6:08 PM UTC

eloisius wrote: post #15

I'd love to see Jupyter (IPython Notebooks) capable of this kind of thing. It'd be awesome to be able to select a column of a Pandas DataFrame and apply a function to it.

Well capable? Yes Pandas can do that but I think what you are talking about is you want a GUI tool?

Everything about Pandas, IPython(Now Jupyter) and R (And the other data languages) are 100% about performing functions.

Re: Show HN: Dtab – Spreadsheet for Data Science

#37

Post by angdis » Fri, Oct 02, 2015, 6:10 PM UTC

Zikes wrote: post #28

pikzen wrote: post #8

Every single spreadsheet software has been able to do this for years, but using Javascript makes it better amirite? What makes this better than Excel (VBA, Python, probably half of the languages on the planet.), Libre Office, Google Spreadsheets, etc., aside from Javascript ? The only point I could see would be integrating this into a page, which is of dubious utility.

In a typical office environment, everybody knows how to work with spreadsheets. They're a common interface and a great way to present and explore tabular data. But as soon as you put that data into an Excel document and hit Save, it's outdated. Somewhere, somebody in the office has a .xlsx file on their C: drive with the data you need, but that doesn't help you much, does it? Or somebody puts the data into a spreadsh…

Yes, I agree.

There's another nuanced advantage to this kind of tool, however: the ability to perform "reproducible" analysis.

With an excel spreadsheet, the person doing the analysis typically pulls in some data (usually by copy/paste), and then performs a series of manipulations on it. These manipulations are NOT recorded. A the end of the analysis the author sends the spreadsheet in an email or maybe copies the spreadsheet into the body of an email. Recipients, if they're going to evaluate the analysis have a lot of work to do over and aren't necessarily able to determine what, exactly, was done to the data.

Something like this puts everything into a console, javascript libraries, and tables-- as long as the author manipulates data from the console and the functions, it should be possible for someone to follow what was done to the data, reproduce results, and go further with the analysis.

Re: Show HN: Dtab – Spreadsheet for Data Science

#38

Post by SixSigma » Fri, Oct 02, 2015, 6:15 PM UTC

Zikes wrote: post #28

pikzen wrote: post #8

Every single spreadsheet software has been able to do this for years, but using Javascript makes it better amirite? What makes this better than Excel (VBA, Python, probably half of the languages on the planet.), Libre Office, Google Spreadsheets, etc., aside from Javascript ? The only point I could see would be integrating this into a page, which is of dubious utility.

In a typical office environment, everybody knows how to work with spreadsheets. They're a common interface and a great way to present and explore tabular data. But as soon as you put that data into an Excel document and hit Save, it's outdated. Somewhere, somebody in the office has a .xlsx file on their C: drive with the data you need, but that doesn't help you much, does it? Or somebody puts the data into a spreadsh…

Im afraid your experience of workflow is stuck in the 90s

Excel works just fine with dynamic data via SQL and Jason via URL.

You can also embed it as a runtime object in HTML.

Re: Show HN: Dtab – Spreadsheet for Data Science

#39

Post by polskibus » Fri, Oct 02, 2015, 6:24 PM UTC

It's nice to see handsontable put to another good use! What other open source libraries did you use?

Re: Show HN: Dtab – Spreadsheet for Data Science

#40

Post by Zikes » Fri, Oct 02, 2015, 6:27 PM UTC

SixSigma wrote: post #38

Zikes wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a typical office environment, everybody knows how to work with spreadsheets. They're a common interface and a great way to present and explore tabular data. But as soon as you put that data into an Excel document and hit Save, it's outdated. Somewhere, somebody in the office has a .xlsx file on their C: drive with the data you need, but that doesn't help you much, does it? Or somebody puts the data into a spreadsh…

Im afraid your experience of workflow is stuck in the 90s Excel works just fine with dynamic data via SQL and Jason via URL. You can also embed it as a runtime object in HTML.

My experience is stuck in the 90s, as are the coworkers that drive that experience. Most of them refer to the Chrome browser as "the Google", I haven't a snowball's chance in teaching them how to connect an Excel document directly to a central data source.

But what I can do is provide them with an easy interface for interacting with that data directly, and give them the option to "save" their results within the context of those interactions so that they can share a simple link instead of a static file.

As for embedding runtimes in HTML, ActiveX is dead and I do not mourn it. Our office has finally decided to standardize on a modern web browser, and I couldn't be happier about that.