3 ms·

Such things are encouraged by the excel UI because it fails to make relationships and manual corrections easily visible. The human computer interface matters be

by riedel 3y ago

Such things are encouraged by the excel UI because it fails to make relationships and manual corrections easily visible. The human computer interface matters beyond UX.

martynr 3y ago
Surely this can’t be justified as a ux driven “oversight” - I am not an economics professor but I would be feeling totally sketchy if I manipulated a data source in such an apparently arbitrary manner. In combination with the (reportedly)blatant lack of any reference to the methodology in his paper this feels like wilful gross misconduct in professor-land. IMO this sort of thing rightly undermines confidence and credibility of research in a much broader context and should be a sackable matter if shown to be true as asserted.
csydas 3y ago
I get what you're saying, but I would disagree that the focus should be on Excel and its UI/UX. As annoying as Excel is when you're working with _specific_ data that suffers from Excel's attempts to be helpful, I'd wager for most use cases Excel is doing exactly what most users expect it to, or the change is benign at best for most use cases. That isn't to diminish when Excel's help has disastrous consequences, but rather to say it shouldn't be unexpected. If your data requires precision, there are better tools than Excel for working with your data and there should be steps taken by more experienced members of the team to ensure the team doesn't get bit by Excel's features. Excel's behaviors are well known and I'd have to imagine at least one member of any research team has been bitten by Excel's assistance features before during research. I would be surprised if any serious educational institution that teaches about ethics and common pitfalls in research *didn't* caution about how Excel might corrupt research [0]. 0 - Okay, maybe not _that_ surprised, but I would be disappointed and think less of the institution/instructor.

by riedel 3y ago

Such things are encouraged by the excel UI because it fails to make relationships and manual corrections easily visible. The human computer interface matters beyond UX.

martynr 3y ago

Surely this can’t be justified as a ux driven “oversight” - I am not an economics professor but I would be feeling totally sketchy if I manipulated a data source in such an apparently arbitrary manner. In combination with the (reportedly)blatant lack of any reference to the methodology in his paper this feels like wilful gross misconduct in professor-land. IMO this sort of thing rightly undermines confidence and credibility of research in a much broader context and should be a sackable matter if shown to be true as asserted.

csydas 3y ago

I get what you're saying, but I would disagree that the focus should be on Excel and its UI/UX. As annoying as Excel is when you're working with _specific_ data that suffers from Excel's attempts to be helpful, I'd wager for most use cases Excel is doing exactly what most users expect it to, or the change is benign at best for most use cases. That isn't to diminish when Excel's help has disastrous consequences, but rather to say it shouldn't be unexpected. If your data requires precision, there are better tools than Excel for working with your data and there should be steps taken by more experienced members of the team to ensure the team doesn't get bit by Excel's features. Excel's behaviors are well known and I'd have to imagine at least one member of any research team has been bitten by Excel's assistance features before during research. I would be surprised if any serious educational institution that teaches about ethics and common pitfalls in research *didn't* caution about how Excel might corrupt research [0]. 0 - Okay, maybe not _that_ surprised, but I would be disappointed and think less of the institution/instructor.