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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)

#261

Post by Eddy_Viscosity2 »

simonh wrote: post #207
Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just tried this out. I'm using office 2021 and when I first opened excel, this setting was there just like in the link and it seemed to work when I entered a few strings in. 'Fantastic!' I thought. Then I closed it and thought of a few other date-like strings to try and this time the option had disappeared! Every date-looking string was instantly turned into date! I tried a few other times and this setting is gone.…

Have you opened an older file? Maybe it only works with files created with the feature. I’ve no idea why that would be the case, but it’s all I can think of.

Both times (and a few after that), it was accessing excel settings before opening any files or starting a new one. I've tried after opening files, same thing. The setting is just not there like it was the first time.

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

#262

Post by kstrauser »

kqr wrote: post #258
kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be nice if OSs defaulted numeric keypad / * and - to Unicode ÷, ×, −. I never use them even when I do use the digits. That would solve the more glaring typewriter legacies. Then you'd just have the apostrophe/single-quote as the last remaining unification.

I'm not convinced. I was brought up with the middle dot for multiplication (and × reserved for cross products, I suppose?) and according to Wikipedia, the > ISO 80000-2 standard for mathematical notation recommends only the solidus / or "fraction bar" for division, or the "colon" : for ratios; it says that the ÷ sign "should not be used" for division I think these things are way less standardised even on paper than y…

That was kind of my point. We somewhat settled on an ASCII representation of many symbols, and that space is so small that lots of them have multiple meanings you have to infer. There was a brief window where we could’ve taken a different path and used different symbols for different things. Alas, we didn’t.

I don’t contend we should change things today. I do think if I were personally writing a new programming language from scratch today, I’d likely use different Unicode symbols for different operators, and the accompanying language server would nudge people to use them.

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

#263

Post by XlA5vEKsMISoIln »

tssva wrote: post #259
XlA5vEKsMISoIln wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This information doesn't help anyone. The fact is the person was double-clicking a file in a list to view its contents and Excel was trampling it. Nobody in their right mind will waste time to open Excel first, use import feature, re-navigate to the file they were already looking at, and go through the import dialog just to see what's inside .

Trampling it to me implies that Excel was somehow modifying the contents of the file. Which it doesn't do by double clicking on the file and just viewing it. Do you mean that the data shown in Excel wasn't what was expected because of the auto data conversion?

Believe me, I was blown away just the same. And it's not like the accountant clicked a save button of a on-close dialog, no. Opening a CSV file was enough.

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

#264

Post by dayjaby »

moefh wrote: post #146
Dalewyn wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Somewhat related, bitmap files (.bmp) store the image lines in bottom-to-top order, effectively putting (0,0) at the bottom-left. It's the only image format I've ever seen that does that -- everyone else stores lines in top-to-bottom order, consistent with putting (0,0) at the top-left.

What do bitmap and excel have in common? :D

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

#265

Post by albrewer »

StableAlkyne wrote: post #110
HKH2 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes people need to be saved from themselves. E.g. spreadsheets can have mistakes very quickly when people treat them as databases and start copying columns between spreadsheets assuming that the primary keys (e.g. in one column) are identical while they happily add rows and move rows around.

To be fair, there are no good, accessible database tools around for your average non programmer user. Access tried to be this a decade ago, until MS started to let it die. So now, your only option is basically Excel. There's a reason it's the main thing people gravitate into.

For really simple databases, I've had limited success getting people to use a UI in front of SQLite:

https://sqlitebrowser.org/

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

#266

Post by albrewer »

XlA5vEKsMISoIln wrote: post #158
Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote: post #56

But why oh why can't you disable automatic date reading? Put something in settings with a checkbox that I, the user, can tell excel to F-off with that nonsense. Is there anybody who can argue the 'for' case for having this on all the time without recourse?

Introducing checkboxes somewhere in the bowels of settings adds more ways for things to go wrong. What is the default? Do the defaults differ across versions? How do you keep it consistent across computers and installations? What if you actually need the function ad hoc? This reminds me of CSV export. I haven't used Windows for a decade but I remember that if you wanted to change how decimal numbers were exported you…

> What is the default?

The old behavior

> Do the defaults differ across versions?

No

> How do you keep it consistent across computers and installations?

It should be per-cell, so it's document specific.

> What if you actually need the function ad hoc?

Every option in the formatting pane is ad-hoc, this wouldn't be any different.

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

#267

Post by tssva »

XlA5vEKsMISoIln wrote: post #263
tssva wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trampling it to me implies that Excel was somehow modifying the contents of the file. Which it doesn't do by double clicking on the file and just viewing it. Do you mean that the data shown in Excel wasn't what was expected because of the auto data conversion?

Believe me, I was blown away just the same. And it's not like the accountant clicked a save button of a on-close dialog, no. Opening a CSV file was enough.

I first used Excel on Windows 3.1 and over the decades since have opened countless CSV files with it. I have never observed this behavior.
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