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One in five genetics papers contains errors thanks to Excel (2016)

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Re: One in five genetics papers contains errors thanks to Excel (2016)

#171

Post by Biganon »

AllegedAlec wrote: post #155
bvan wrote: post #78

Sounds like user-error, not a software error. Learn to use the software and its idiosyncrasies. RTFM.

God I hate programmers so much. "Hurdurdur it's not my fault. The end users are wrong. We shouldn't have to spend time creating an interface and UX that actually works as expected" Absolute fucking retards. We make tools for these people. If these tools do not work as end users would expect to that is our mistake. Stop coping about 'training end users'.

This. There is absolutely no excuse for Excel's behavior here. It's been DECADES and they still haven't added a goddamn dialog that says, upon importing data, "OH, it looks like your data contains stuff that looks like dates, are they dates, or are they NOT DATES? Thanks, have a nice day"

Re: One in five genetics papers contains errors thanks to Excel (2016)

#172

Post by augustk »

v1ne wrote: post #134

We have a saying in German: A bad worker always blames their tools. Excel has many quirks, but I'm still very grateful that it exists, for quickly putting together some numbers and still being able to change the inputs to my formulas.

I think what you mean here is that you are grateful that spreadsheet applications exist.

https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spreadsheet

Re: One in five genetics papers contains errors thanks to Excel (2016)

#173

Post by tssva »

lbriner wrote: post #161

Don't get me started on the automatic conversion of strings that it thinks are in scientific notation into numbers - which you can't switch off! We have large data exports from systems that include things like unique location code. You accidentally happen to notice that a block of these look weird and it isn't just the display of them that has changed, the contents of the cell were changed by Excel automatically, wit…

Is there a reason you don't specify the data type when importing or if it is a frequently used data file format automate the import using VBA specifying the correct data type?

Re: One in five genetics papers contains errors thanks to Excel (2016)

#174

Post by charlieyu1 »

Validark wrote: post #135
bikenaga wrote: post #48

An annoyance with spreadsheets that deterred me from ever using them in teaching is that they've perpetuated a arithmetic order-of-precedence bug. ("Bug" in the sense that it contradicts long-standing mathematical convention.) If you type -3^2 in a cell and press ENTER, the spreadsheet tell you it's "9". It should be "-9"; in math, exponentiation has precedence over unary minus, so you square 3, then negate the resul…

This is probably the most overly pedantic, nitpicky reason for not using a program I've ever heard. I'm aware that there are two different conventions on this issue, so I just use parentheses to get the behavior I want. But, growing up, as the top math student in my class, it never occurred to me that somebody out there wants -3^2 to equal -9, I thought it was just a weird quirk in some calculators/programs. How woul…

Everyone learnt -3^2=-9 in middle school… it is a very clear implementation mistake

Re: One in five genetics papers contains errors thanks to Excel (2016)

#175

Post by tsimionescu »

eviks wrote: post #166
tsimionescu wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no "mistake", the current way makes much more sense in programming notation. It's far better that -3^2 is consistent with -3+2. The caret notation for exponentiation is anyway completely different, and works very differently in terms of precedence from using super scripts in math.

That's a mistake in every statement: Excel isn't programming, so programming notation isn't even relevant There is also no difference in the caret notation vs superscript, its upward pointing form literally meant to signify SUPERscript It's far better that 0-3^2 -3^2 are consistent, consistency between exponent and addition makes little sense since by universal convention they have different priorities, so you'd not…

Excel formulae are absolutely a form of computation, or programming.

While the caret is meant to symbolize superscript, it is nevertheless a completely different notation for exponentiation.

I don't see why 0-3^2 and -3^2 need to be consistent necessarily. Sign change and subtraction are different operations, so they can have different relationships with other operators.

If + worked like you want ^ to work, then -3+2 would equal -5, instead of the more common -1.

^ does work differently from superscript in all apps. The way you write "three to the power two plus two" is completely different.

Re: One in five genetics papers contains errors thanks to Excel (2016)

#177

Post by prepend »

the_gorilla wrote: post #130
prepend wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excel is not a genetics tool. It has millions if use cases, many more important than genetics. Excel didn’t care about this. It’s like people complaining because sugar gets misused. Or that murderers stab people with knives. The solutions isn’t to “fix” knives.

This is an awful mindset and I'm tired of people acting like tools only ever have pre-defined purpose and you need a special purpose tool to do anything. Also that's a dumb analogy. Here's a better one: A knife that breaks 20% of the time when you try to cut pork, because you didn't buy a separate pork-cutting knife. I'm not doing anything nearly as special and always have dates import as numbers for whatever reason.…

How a knife that breaks 0.00001% of the times because it’s used a billion times a day?

If excel broke 20% of the time, I’d agree. But it rarely breaks. It’s just widely used.

I’ve used Excel for decades. I just set the data types on my columns. The reason Excel does that is because the vast majority of people like it and rely on it. And changing it now will break millions of workflows.

People assume their workflow is super important and worthy of software making special exceptions just for them. There’s an easy solution that people can follow now. Let’s focus on that rather than introducing a “fix” that breaks it for other people.

Excel has thought about this and there’s no simple fix. Nobody is forced to use Excel.

Re: One in five genetics papers contains errors thanks to Excel (2016)

#178

Post by eviks »

tsimionescu wrote: post #175
eviks wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a mistake in every statement: Excel isn't programming, so programming notation isn't even relevant There is also no difference in the caret notation vs superscript, its upward pointing form literally meant to signify SUPERscript It's far better that 0-3^2 -3^2 are consistent, consistency between exponent and addition makes little sense since by universal convention they have different priorities, so you'd not…

Excel formulae are absolutely a form of computation, or programming. While the caret is meant to symbolize superscript, it is nevertheless a completely different notation for exponentiation. I don't see why 0-3^2 and -3^2 need to be consistent necessarily. Sign change and subtraction are different operations, so they can have different relationships with other operators. If + worked like you want ^ to work, then -3+2…

Abacus is a form of computation, doesn't make it programming.

> While the caret is meant to symbolize superscript, it is nevertheless a completely different notation for exponentiation.

Wait, do you believe slash / to be a completely different notation with different rules for division?

Also, it's not completely different, I've already explained that its form points to the same participle - RAISing base to the power, exactly the same as superscript. It's just that input/typesetting on computers is very primitive, so you can't really use superscript conveniently, otherwise it's semantically the same, so having different rules for the same meaning makes no sense

> I don't see why 0-3^2 and -3^2 need to be consistent necessarily

ok, if you fail to see this basic similarity but somehow think -3+2 is identical, don't have anything else to say here

> If + worked like you want ^ to work, then -3+2 would equal -5, instead of the more common -1.

Why would I ever want addition to work the same as exponeiation??? That's your weird wish for them to behave the same, I respect the math precedence of operators.

> ^ doesw differently from superscript in all apps

that's not true, https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=-3%5E2

Many calculators / calculator apps also behave the same

Re: One in five genetics papers contains errors thanks to Excel (2016)

#179

Post by prepend »

Mistletoe wrote: post #60
prepend wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excel is not a genetics tool. It has millions if use cases, many more important than genetics. Excel didn’t care about this. It’s like people complaining because sugar gets misused. Or that murderers stab people with knives. The solutions isn’t to “fix” knives.

Perhaps the first time you start excel maybe a short setup tutorial that sets the default parameters you want for every spreadsheet you create.

I don’t think it would have much of an impact. And I hate those forced wizards and tutorials as I use excel in lots of environments.

I remember Excel team writing about why they didn’t have advanced settings to turn it off. I don’t remember the rationale but I’d rather have some switches I can set for the situations where I don’t want it.

Although I do want it on and just check my data types. And for the most part I solved this by opening and never editing in Excel. It seems to be the one hack I’ve gotten coworkers to stick with is “don’t click save” when opening large files in Excel.

Re: One in five genetics papers contains errors thanks to Excel (2016)

#180

Post by zmgsabst »

RandomThoughts3 wrote: post #151
zmgsabst wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what about (0-3)^2? You said that “-3” = “0-3”. So we have “-3^2” is “(0-3)^2” is 9. Agreeing with -3^2 = 9. You’re performing a sleight of hand when you define “-3” to be “0-3”, but move the parenthesis to get your second equation. You have to insert your definition as a single term inside parenthesis — you can’t simply remove them to change association (as you have done). That’s against the rules. So if you thi…

> (0-3)^2? It’s entirely unambiguous due to the parenthesis. I don’t think the rest of your argument actually makes sense. There is no sleight of hand required. The original argument is entirely related to having unary minus and binary minus which are different operators conceptually have similar precedence as being less surprising.

My point is that you can’t define “-3” as “0-3” to make it work: you’re assuming exactly what’s being debated (via sleight of hand) when you insert the terms with brackets in the way you do rather than the way I do.

When you try to swap in the unary operator without that to make it “less surprising”, you get 9.

Precisely what you said was wrong about the unwary operator (in Excel).

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