Saving the World from Spreadsheets [video] • Hacker News Board

Re: Saving the World from Spreadsheets [video]

#21

Post by emeryberger » Mon, Jul 22, 2019, 12:55 AM UTC

phonon wrote: post #14

wwarner wrote: post #2

Excelint https://github.com/plasma-umass/ExceLint-addin CheckCel https://github.com/plasma-umass/DataDebug

What's the difference between https://github.com/plasma-umass/ExceLint-addin and https://github.com/ExceLint/ExceLint ?

(ExceLint co-author and the speaker on this video here) The first one is the latest version which works in all modern Excel versions (Windows, Mac, Online). It’s a rewrite in TypeScript I did while on sabbatical this year at Microsoft Research (also it has faster and improved algorithms and more features to further improve its precision and usability). It is actively under development. Installation instructions are in the README. We are hoping to have it posted on the Microsoft store at some point. If you would like to see something like this in Excel, say so!

Re: Saving the World from Spreadsheets [video]

#22

Post by emeryberger » Mon, Jul 22, 2019, 1:38 AM UTC

DonHopkins wrote: post #7

Check out the guy with his face planted in his keyboard at 9:05! Is that what spreadsheet debugging looks like? Edit: at 13:40, maybe he's just using facebook. Edit2: I'm sorry for putting it that way, I didn't mean to shame him about his vision. I only thought it seemed like he wasn't paying much attention to the lecture when he kept switching between using his phone and laptop, while wearing a "facebook" t-shirt.

Please delete this. He is a grad student with a serious vision impairment.

Re: Saving the World from Spreadsheets [video]

#23

Post by phonon » Mon, Jul 22, 2019, 4:15 AM UTC

emeryberger wrote: post #21

phonon wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the difference between https://github.com/plasma-umass/ExceLint-addin and https://github.com/ExceLint/ExceLint ?

(ExceLint co-author and the speaker on this video here) The first one is the latest version which works in all modern Excel versions (Windows, Mac, Online). It’s a rewrite in TypeScript I did while on sabbatical this year at Microsoft Research (also it has faster and improved algorithms and more features to further improve its precision and usability). It is actively under development. Installation instructions are i…

Cool! Does it include all the capabilities of https://github.com/plasma-umass/DataDebug or should/could both be installed?

Re: Saving the World from Spreadsheets [video]

#24

Post by emeryberger » Mon, Jul 22, 2019, 6:10 AM UTC

phonon wrote: post #23

emeryberger wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(ExceLint co-author and the speaker on this video here) The first one is the latest version which works in all modern Excel versions (Windows, Mac, Online). It’s a rewrite in TypeScript I did while on sabbatical this year at Microsoft Research (also it has faster and improved algorithms and more features to further improve its precision and usability). It is actively under development. Installation instructions are i…

Cool! Does it include all the capabilities of https://github.com/plasma-umass/DataDebug or should/could both be installed?

Right now, ExceLint and CheckCell are not integrated. But this is something we would like to do!

Re: Saving the World from Spreadsheets [video]

#25

Post by _Wintermute » Mon, Jul 22, 2019, 8:39 AM UTC

educationdata wrote: post #15

larrydag wrote: post #12

I'm an R advocate. I call R the "Excel Buster". I think reproducible research is very important and tools should follow. Excel has its place in fast mathematics prototyping but for reproducible research it is quite lacking.

I actually think you are more possibly to make mistakes in R than in Excel. Because in Excel you always see the results directly, and you can even easily catch an anomaly in a single cell. But in R it takes one more step to see the results, and you probably won't see results of all the rows directly.

Especially when R really likes to carry on chugging along with your analysis spitting out nonsense values when it should have failed on something 50 lines ago.

    sum(1, 2, 3, 10)
    [1] 16 # great

    mean(1, 2, 3, 10)
    [1] 1 # wait, what?

Re: Saving the World from Spreadsheets [video]

#26

Post by FromHoiPolloi » Tue, Jul 23, 2019, 6:00 AM UTC

mycall wrote: post #18

larrydag wrote: post #12

I'm an R advocate. I call R the "Excel Buster". I think reproducible research is very important and tools should follow. Excel has its place in fast mathematics prototyping but for reproducible research it is quite lacking.

Vast majority of Excel users would implode learning R.

Can confirm. Source: am an excel user.

Re: Saving the World from Spreadsheets [video]

#27

Post by freqshow » Tue, Jul 23, 2019, 11:40 AM UTC

vogtb wrote: post #13

I have a habit of taking notes on these types of talks when I stumble upon them, so for anyone interested, here's a quick write up of the video. Some of it is paraphrased,. * "[Microsoft estimates that 750M users of Excel. (%7 of the world population).]" * Spreadsheet errors basically ruined the economy of Greece. * "State of the art" is manually double checking your formulas. This is what the experts suggest… * Ther…

Thank you for posting this. I know that your taking a few moments to offer this bit of help to the community is appreciated by many more people than will ever reply to you.