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I think the concern is less that it's a good tool, and more that it's one invariably receives emails with attached documents that open well only in Excel.

Declanomous 10y ago
I re-read that part and I think the sentiment was more like "If you are a great computer scientist you have most of the skills you need to be able to use R." Regardless, even if the recipient has Excel, I think it is poor form to insert an Excel object into your reports and emails. The copy/paste menu allows you to paste charts and graphs as images, and it's a superior option to inserting an actual graph (or table) the majority of the time. Not only does it preserve the formatting, and allow better cross-platform compatibility, but documents with images instead of graphs open faster and are generally smaller.
- Programmatic 10y ago
  The same can be said for screen clipping an Excel graph, which can be done at any point, and there's an additional bonus in that the layperson can see and manipulate the data as well. It's a(n admittedly poor) self-contained document that anyone can poke at, versus an image that only the anointed can recreate with different data. For better or for worse.
  - Declanomous 10y ago
    That point was in favor of Excel actually, sorry I wasn't very clear. I was actually referring to the built-in functionality in Office that allows you to choose to paste Excel graphs as images instead of as full excel objects. Putting people down for using Excel for simple tasks is snobbery, plain and simple. I'm not a Microsoft apologist in the least (I use Linux as my desktop OS), and I can confidently say Excel is a great program. While there are more powerful tools, Excel is often perfectly suited for smaller tasks. When I need to clean and match a small set of data, I'll reach for Excel. When I need to clean and link a small set of data, I'd rather use filter and VLOOKUP in Excel than dealing with SQL/R/Python. The faster I can turn data into information the happier my coworkers are, and the happier I am in turn.

Declanomous 10y ago

I re-read that part and I think the sentiment was more like "If you are a great computer scientist you have most of the skills you need to be able to use R." Regardless, even if the recipient has Excel, I think it is poor form to insert an Excel object into your reports and emails. The copy/paste menu allows you to paste charts and graphs as images, and it's a superior option to inserting an actual graph (or table) the majority of the time. Not only does it preserve the formatting, and allow better cross-platform compatibility, but documents with images instead of graphs open faster and are generally smaller.

Programmatic 10y ago
The same can be said for screen clipping an Excel graph, which can be done at any point, and there's an additional bonus in that the layperson can see and manipulate the data as well. It's a(n admittedly poor) self-contained document that anyone can poke at, versus an image that only the anointed can recreate with different data. For better or for worse.
- Declanomous 10y ago
  That point was in favor of Excel actually, sorry I wasn't very clear. I was actually referring to the built-in functionality in Office that allows you to choose to paste Excel graphs as images instead of as full excel objects. Putting people down for using Excel for simple tasks is snobbery, plain and simple. I'm not a Microsoft apologist in the least (I use Linux as my desktop OS), and I can confidently say Excel is a great program. While there are more powerful tools, Excel is often perfectly suited for smaller tasks. When I need to clean and match a small set of data, I'll reach for Excel. When I need to clean and link a small set of data, I'd rather use filter and VLOOKUP in Excel than dealing with SQL/R/Python. The faster I can turn data into information the happier my coworkers are, and the happier I am in turn.