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.
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One in five genetics papers contains errors thanks to Excel (2016)
221–230 of 267 posts
Re: One in five genetics papers contains errors thanks to Excel (2016)
#222Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're right that violating established mathematical convention can be a deal-killer for some kinds of adoption. A few years ago I was reading the docs for a new programming language, thinking it might be useful in teaching. The docs were well-written and in a beautifully produced book. I got to the chapter on trig functions and discovered that they'd decided to make angles increase clockwise . And there was a graph…
"more natural" is a good reason any time since otherwise you get to perpetuate these bad conventions for all the future generations to suffer.
What is "more natural" is a matter of opinion, and opinion will differ.
But even if there's a lot of agreement that an existing convention could stand improvement, that doesn't by itself make it "a good reason any time" for throwing out the existing convention.
What is a "convention"? It's something followed by a large "installed base". So changing a convention means a large cost will be incurred in changing up.
Who should decide whether the benefits of changing outweigh the costs? Someone has to pay for it, and simple fairness suggests that the people who will bear the costs of changing up should have the largest say.
The point is that just because someone thinks something new is better doesn't mean that old should be thrown out. And if you ignore that installed base, the change just doesn't happen.
We tried in the U.S. to switch over to metric years ago. Many of us think it would have made sense, but many more people didn't agree and it didn't happen.
It would be easier computationally if there were 100 degrees in a circle rather than 360. But the 360-installed-base is too large and the costs of changing are judged to be too great, so we're stuck with 360.
You're absolutely right, though, that suggestions for change should always get a fair hearing, and people who believe in them should go ahead and see if enough other people will sign on.
Re: One in five genetics papers contains errors thanks to Excel (2016)
#223Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Godot game engine has its 2d graphics origin at the top-left of the screen, with the positive Y axis pointed down. Having clockwise trig functions is a natural consequence of that. I think it's a fairly common setup for all 2D graphics software.
I don't think I've ever seen a graphical system of any kind that didn't have 0,0 at the top-left corner of the monitor or viewport either, with positive x going right and positive y going down. I actually didn't even think about it until now. Now it's going to bug me. God damnit. :V
> I don't think I've ever seen a graphical system of any kind that didn't have 0,0 at the top-left corner of the monitor or viewport either, with positive x going right and positive y going down.
Is that because the electron beam in cathode ray tubes scanned from top left to bottom right?
Re: One in five genetics papers contains errors thanks to Excel (2016)
#224Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
If you open a CSV file without going through a specific import process, you don't even get the option to specify a data type. And once it's open it's too late to fix it, the original data is already gone.
The specific import process isn't some sort of esoteric process. It is the data import wizard. Also as I said if you are regularly importing data from a file with the same format writing some VBA to do so is pretty quick and simple task.
Also your data isn't gone. It is still in the CSV file you imported it from. Re-import it.
Re: One in five genetics papers contains errors thanks to Excel (2016)
#225Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe something's wrong with my terminal. In dc: 3 _ 2 ^ p gives 0 _3 2 ^ p gives 9 3 2 ^ _ p gives 0 5 _ p gives 0 _5 p gives -5 You didn't intend that I should get those zeros, right?
~ % dc -v dc 6.5.0 Copyright (c) 2018-2023 Gavin D. Howard and contributors Report bugs at: https://git.gavinhoward.com/gavin/bc This is free software with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY. ~ % dc 3 _ 2 ^ p 9 _3 2 ^ p 9 3 2 ^ _ p -9 5 _ p -5 _5 p -5 (control-D) The version that I have appears to have _ parsed as an operator in addition to the negation of a numeric constant.
I am the author of that dc.
You are correct about its behavior.
See https://git.gavinhoward.com/gavin/bc/src/branch/master/manua... (scroll down to the underscore command).
Re: One in five genetics papers contains errors thanks to Excel (2016)
#226Earlier quoted context omitted.
This issue seems like partly an artifact of the invented binary operator ^. In math exponents are superscripts and there's no binary operator- it's part of the term. But for text on computers, binary operators ended up being fabricated for the things you couldn't represent directly. The caret is common and was the first one to appear, but doubled multiplication signs is another one. Traditionally, binary operators ha…
In my country we teach the same rules in math class. Blaming it on “unary vs binary” was a stretch. Next you’re going to blame it on the lexer for producing the -3 as a single term instead of two. (Which WOULD explain something, but… fix it?!) In my country we use a horizontal line with a dot above and below to indicate in-line division in lower grades. Exactly like the computer /. It’s not like there was no preceden…
I also learned the line with a dot above and below in my country, the USA. But that was a very long time ago, math teaching has changed immeasurably since my time.
In Unicode it's U+00F7: https://www.compart.com/en/unicode/U+00F7
Re: One in five genetics papers contains errors thanks to Excel (2016)
#227Earlier quoted context omitted.
~ % dc -v dc 6.5.0 Copyright (c) 2018-2023 Gavin D. Howard and contributors Report bugs at: https://git.gavinhoward.com/gavin/bc This is free software with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY. ~ % dc 3 _ 2 ^ p 9 _3 2 ^ p 9 3 2 ^ _ p -9 5 _ p -5 _5 p -5 (control-D) The version that I have appears to have _ parsed as an operator in addition to the negation of a numeric constant.
I'm using the version from Debian testing: dc -V dc (GNU bc 1.07.1) 1.4.1 In fact, in my version "-v" as opposed to "-V" isn't recognized as a valid option. 3 _ 2 ^ p 0
I am Gavin Howard, the author of the other dc.
My dc does have a few differences from the GNU dc. I added the extension of using _ as a negative sign.
That is why you are both seeing behavior differences.
Re: One in five genetics papers contains errors thanks to Excel (2016)
#228Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you open a CSV file without going through a specific import process, you don't even get the option to specify a data type. And once it's open it's too late to fix it, the original data is already gone.
The specific import process isn't some sort of esoteric process. It is the data import wizard. Also as I said if you are regularly importing data from a file with the same format writing some VBA to do so is pretty quick and simple task. Also your data isn't gone. It is still in the CSV file you imported it from. Re-import it.
I would wager more people open a CSV by double-clicking on it rather than using the import data wizard. And even if you use the wizard it takes extra work to specify the type of each column, which most people won't bother with.
Writing some VBA is a simple process if you're a programmer. I wonder how many genetic researchers fit that description?
P.S. when I said "too late to fix it", I meant by some process within Excel. Of course you can re-import the original file, but maybe you only notice the problem after you've done a lot of work with it?
Re: One in five genetics papers contains errors thanks to Excel (2016)
#229Know your tools. When I see such headlines, I feel sad about the state of this world and obstacles to progress, angry about the stupidity of designing all the tools for the most lazy of users, and at the same time I also laugh about the failures of proprietary software and its users, who could easily have invested a little bit of time to learn alternatives, but apparently chose not to. Yes the tooling they use might…
Yes, tools are not made for users but for the tool-builders. Everyone else must adapt!
Tools are designed for a particular use case/userbase. Excel was not designed for gene scientists. It wouldn't make sense for me, a home owner who uses a jigsaw to cut molding, to complain to a chainsaw maker that their chainsaw isn't right for my job.
Re: One in five genetics papers contains errors thanks to Excel (2016)
#230We 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.
In Arabic, “the one who can’t dance says the floor is crooked”