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Excel 2.0 – Is there a better visual data model than a grid of cells?

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Re: Excel 2.0 – Is there a better visual data model than a grid of cells?

#11

Post by jayd16 »

chrisgd wrote: post #5

I think about this a lot. There is a need for more data-driven applications to create graphics that are more “track able” than excel. I have a series of charts that need to be sent out to multiple people (internal and external) each week. Charts, logos, tables, etc could benefit from a pipeline but without needing a data engineer. Right now, we have a standard data download from Bloomberg or another data provider, ma…

>No way to see what was done last week or changes made to the chart / table output from one person to another besides new versions of the same excel file (but still no way to see the logs)

Why are multiple columns/pages with the various stages of the data insufficient?

Re: Excel 2.0 – Is there a better visual data model than a grid of cells?

#12

Post by nojito »

kzrdude wrote: post #7

Working with jupyter, I'm seriously contemplating around how to bring the best of Excel into a pandas or jupyter workflow. Mostly for exploration but also making reports, statistics, aggregations

Check out https://quarto.org/

It's made by the team behind rmarkdown and is easily one of the best ways to make reporting easier.

Re: Excel 2.0 – Is there a better visual data model than a grid of cells?

#14

Post by The_rationalist »

snide wrote: post #9

I've shifted to Airbase for pretty much anything data sheet related. The ability to have more typical data-flow joins with an easier to manage UX that teaches folks along the way is pretty phenomenal. It grows as you need, but still remains relatively simple. It's one of my favorite pieces of software from the past decade.

[dead]

Re: Excel 2.0 – Is there a better visual data model than a grid of cells?

#15

Post by jsmith99 »

chrisgd wrote: post #5

I think about this a lot. There is a need for more data-driven applications to create graphics that are more “track able” than excel. I have a series of charts that need to be sent out to multiple people (internal and external) each week. Charts, logos, tables, etc could benefit from a pipeline but without needing a data engineer. Right now, we have a standard data download from Bloomberg or another data provider, ma…

Excel includes Power Query which is a decent ETL pipeline tool.

Re: Excel 2.0 – Is there a better visual data model than a grid of cells?

#16

Post by bobbylarrybobby »

snide wrote: post #9

I've shifted to Airbase for pretty much anything data sheet related. The ability to have more typical data-flow joins with an easier to manage UX that teaches folks along the way is pretty phenomenal. It grows as you need, but still remains relatively simple. It's one of my favorite pieces of software from the past decade.

Do you mean Airtable?

Re: Excel 2.0 – Is there a better visual data model than a grid of cells?

#17

Post by wvenable »

chrisgd wrote: post #5

I think about this a lot. There is a need for more data-driven applications to create graphics that are more “track able” than excel. I have a series of charts that need to be sent out to multiple people (internal and external) each week. Charts, logos, tables, etc could benefit from a pipeline but without needing a data engineer. Right now, we have a standard data download from Bloomberg or another data provider, ma…

Isn't this just a programming problem? Build an application that accepts the data, produces the result, and has a GUI for managing all exceptions? I've build many of these things.

Re: Excel 2.0 – Is there a better visual data model than a grid of cells?

#19

Post by landr0id »

etchalon wrote: post #10
maliker wrote: post #8

I liked the way Apple did it in their Numbers clone of Excel - you can have multiple grids on a single page. It makes it a lot easier to have related data on the same page without fiddling with the row/column sizes to suite multiple types of data.

Numbers is deeply underrated.

When I was in university I was working on some biology homework and didn't have Excel, but I did have Numbers! I quickly became annoyed with how smart Numbers tried to be with formatting. It knew better than me what data type some cells were and iirc it was impossible to inform it otherwise. I bought Excel after losing an hour or so of my time.
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