18 ms·

Humans vs. Microsoft Excel: The Quest For Smart Tools

41 points by turoczy 13y ago

justinlilly 13y ago
Typed fields sound neat!
samspenc 13y ago
At a previous job, I tried to convince them (and succeeded in some cases) to build a domain-specific web app instead of sharing and e-mailing ever-changing Excel docs. I used CakePHP, and it was really easy to whip up a complete CRUD web-app with domain-specific information and DB tables, allow people to collaborate through a web interface, and be happy users. Some apps are tougher than others, I'll admit.
cmwelsh 13y ago
You can turn Excel spreadsheets into web applications quite easily with Google Apps Script. We wrote a REST interface to a massive multi tab Excel file recently and it only took like an hour, as opposed to days of reverse engineering the calculations (the client did not know what the equations in the file were because the employee who created it left). Basically I'm saying it will get much, much worse before it gets better.
roin 13y ago
I work with an army of very smart people who need to build incredibly complex models to drive our business. Like most companies, we turn to Excel. It's the only widely used application with a low enough barrier to entry that "non-technical" people can build legitimately complex (if not always robust) models. But the problems with Excel and general spreadsheet modeling limitations offer such a great opportunity for improvement that would impact just about every business out there. I wish I saw more people tackling this, or I had a great idea to do it myself. The problems I see are around barrier to entry, in that it must be usable in just a couple minutes, simple enough for non-programmers to learn, and equally or more efficient to get a basic model functioning. Otherwise I just don't see wide adoption despite possible maintenance, accuracy, and reliability benefits. James Kwak has written some smart stuff about this (http://baselinescenario.com/2013/04/18/more-bad-excel/ http://baselinescenario.com/2013/04/18/more-bad-excel/), and I'm interested in what Data Nitro (datanitro.com) is doing.
- peteforde 13y ago
  I think Data Nitro is really cool, and as a data geek the idea of having a real language available inside the Excel environment gets me very excited. Unfortunately, by increasing the power and capability of what a careless user can do, while expanding the learning curve and moving Python code to a different place than any cell-level functions or global VBA functions are stored... all of this just makes the potential for issues of human failure far greater.
  - BrianEatWorld 13y ago
    Is there a reason you don't use one of the current data analysis languages like R, Stata, SAS, etc?
    - peteforde 13y ago
      I use those languages frequently, when they are the right tool for the job. Well, R and Stata, at least — but also Processing and D3 and Google Maps... Not sure how this is relevant to my concern, though.
- elirubel 13y ago
  Interesting and agreed. What if excel was very basic in functionality, and then as soon as you get into complex modeling or advanced functions you pull from a user generated (either private or public) template library. The trick would be in making the implementation of templating simple and intuitive. The goal behind templating would be to prevent complex formulas from being entered in tiny cells, and to leverage a userbase that has "been there, done that." Do you think that would shorten new hire ramp up in using existing complex models etc?
- gruseom 13y ago
  I worked in a similar environment and came to similar conclusions. In my view, your three requirements (usable without a big learning curve, intuitive to non-programmers, equally or more efficient than Excel) point directly back to the spreadsheet UI. Spreadsheet users get spreadsheets in a way they don't get anything else. It's their mental model and they love it and there's no way they're going to give it up. (In particular, there's no way they're going to migrate to even the simplest of general-purpose scripting languages.) Therefore the only thing that will get them off Excel is a new kind of spreadsheet. The question is, what would that look like? If it's too different from Excel, it won't meet your three requirements. But if it's too like Excel, there won't be any reason to use it, nor will it address Excel's limitations which are the subject of the OP. I've been thinking about and working on this ever since—it's a deeper problem than it appears to be! Edit: by the way, you're right (in my opinion) to emphasize barrier-to-entry as a great danger in this area. If you look at the history of attempts to innovate in the spreadsheet space (most famously Lotus Improv), that is the reef on which they tend to run aground.
ajscherer 13y ago
The author said it himself, these errors were caused by humans, not excel. I don't think making excel "smart" enough to prevent people from making dumb mistakes is a good idea. In fact I think that would transform excel into microsoft word, which is the only thing that could make life worse for your typical competent office worker. Excel already has a lot of this crap. It already requires an act of god to prevent excel from changing your string of digits into a number or date. It already shows you little exclamation point icons when your formulas omit adjacent rows or are different from other formulas in the same row/column. A tool will never make it possible for dumb people to solve hard problems easily. It's like trying to design a knife that makes it impossible to cut yourself. Nobody with any kind of a clue would want that knife. A tool should be straightforward and intuitive, but it shouldn't aim to be smarter than it's user.
- thiele 13y ago
  There is low hanging fruit in the problems to solve though. For example, finding and highlighting outliers in a column. It's a relatively simple feature but yields big benefits to users.
  - pyoung 13y ago
    Except it isn't that simple. Your definition of an outlier may be completely different from some one else's (95th percentile, median/regression method, or simple max/min, some of these are already possible in excel). Then, how is the information displayed? Highlighting cells? Well if you have +10k rows of data, than that won't be too useful. Creating a summary in another column/sheet will add to the already cluttered 'results' spreadsheet, etc... This is why I recommend using programming based tools for data analysis. Any non-programming tool has to find a balance between the number of features offered and the complexity/ease-of-use of the tool. With programming tools, you merely have to find the right package (or build your own) which essentially results in getting the exact set of features that you need to solve your problem.
    - hamofgobelgope 13y ago
zvrba 13y ago
Hmm... Excel-like front-end to Haskell?
- gruseom 13y ago
  I would love to see someone try this.
- malandrew 13y ago
  This would be awesome.
- jacques_chester 13y ago
  For inspiration, consider SIAG: http://siag.nu/siag/ http://siag.nu/siag/
coderguy123 13y ago
Having worked in nyc financial world, I can say excel is here to stay - at least for foreseeable future. Heck, the only reason I have windows running in parallel in my MBA is excel. We use to have what we called "excel test" for all quants and analyst positions. We use to QA our excel sheets just like any other software application. I am surprised that many companies don't do that - it only makes sense.
- pinaceae 13y ago
  why? excel runs perfectly fine in its OSX version. which differences have you encountered?
  - coderguy123 13y ago
    being very heavy excel keyboard shortcut user, assumed it wouldn't be the same in mac. never tried it.
    - pinaceae 13y ago
      fyi: you can re-map any keyboard shortcut through Tools->Customize Keyboard.
  - bsg75 13y ago
    VBA, which was removed in Excel 2008 and returned in Excel 2011, is not fully compatible with Windows versions, where most users author code. Backend data connectivity options are virtually non-existant. Excel 2011 has what appears to be a 10+ year old version of MS Query. Some 3rd party financial plugins are Windows dependent, and I believe some of the Microsoft analysis additions are as well.
    - omni 13y ago
      You nailed it. I would use less generous language than you did to describe VBA's deficiencies in Mac Excel 2011. Huge parts of what could be considered the stdlib are totally missing in the Mac version. The language doesn't even have native dictionaries.
peteforde 13y ago
This is a problem I've spent a lot of time pondering. The author makes several suggestions; one in particular (a GitHub for datasets) is an idea I felt strongly enough about that I founded a start-up called BuzzData to address this concern. Unfortunately, we did not find our critical mass and the product has since successfully pivoted into an entirely different product called LookBookHQ. I do have another idea, which is to bring the concept of testing to the Excel world. I think that the combination of: - a framework for building up test cases that can be run against the data as part of the saving process (think rSpec) - an English-like, indented grammar for defining user stories that can potentially generate code for tests (think Cucumber) - a strong push for a culture of testing in the Excel community that would have to include Microsoft I dunno, honestly. Could be crazy. The culture might never accept testing. But then again, one of the basic ways to sell something is to give people insurance against humiliating themselves. It's possible that this thinking would make a lot of sense to the twice shy, highly risk-averse board members of the major financial institutions and governments of the world.
- vladsanchez 13y ago
  Started following LookBookHQ. =D Ever read "Specification By Example? That approach along with some of your suggestions could be used to prove your testable specification spreadsheet concept. The market awaits for you.
- jacques_chester 13y ago
  I thought of a similar idea, and so have others: http://www.sysmod.com/ http://www.sysmod.com/
pinaceae 13y ago
disagree completely. MS Excel is a masterpiece in software engineering, definitely the best piece of software MS ever created. Large pieces of the economy run on Excel, finance, controlling, etc. are unthinkable without it. the flexibility, ease of use, speed is astounding. applying colors to cells and then being able to sort by color still blows my mind - not the feature per se, but the fact that they included it and solved a common problem (how many times did a client mark something by color in a big spreadsheet...). excel is mobile, works offline. replacing it with some webapp or too much logic just shows the complete misunderstanding of its appeal.
- AdamFernandez 13y ago
  This. It's important to remember that from the perspective of millions of corporate users (not the hacker crowd), this is is THE tool. When you think about it, Microsoft really is Excel. That is their core. Why is it difficult for corporations to switch from Windows? Office. Why Office? Excel. If anyone attempted to create something that not only matched Excel (with all the messy file compatibility issues and macros), but surpassed it, they would be striking at the heart of Microsoft.
  - thiele 13y ago
    Agreed. Although you could replace 'Excel' with 'Word' and still be just as correct.
    - thomasf1 13y ago
      Word isn´t the problem... Converting from Word to something else is some pain for users. Converting from Excel (especially Excel Macros) to something else is in the Millions of $ for developers/re-engineering of those Macros...
- trapezoid 13y ago
  Excel is a great tool, but it has its shortcomings. The article is highlighting the main one: it's easy to build huge, brittle systems with Excel. This immediately brings up questions: What tools exist for building robust spreadsheets? How can we encourage people to use them? Should we make better ones?
karamazov 13y ago
The fundamental problem with big spreadsheets is that they're complex pieces of software, and they're being designed by people who haven't studied software engineering. Building a complex program is hard. It's untenable if you don't approach it properly. This is true whether you're using Excel, Python, LISP, or anything else. Better tools can go a long way to help, but the ultimate answer is educating people on how to properly engineer systems. On that last point - at DataNitro[1], we let people script Excel with Python, which is a better tool than VBA or than doing things by hand. The result is that for a given level of complexity, you see fewer errors and more robust spreadsheets; but when you give people more power, they naturally build more sophisticated spreadsheets. All else being equal, this might result in more, not fewer errors. The great thing about introducing a new tool, though, is that there's also a chance to introduce new ways of working. Suddenly, people start building spreadsheets that work with version control and run unit tests. This helps tremendously with robustness and reliability. [1] https://www.datanitro.com https://www.datanitro.com
- maxcan 13y ago
  As a dynamically typed language, how does Python specifically yield fewer errors than VBA? Or even compared to C# or F#?
6d0debc071 13y ago
I dare say that the problem is less about Excel being dumb than that if you're interested in the underlying logic Excel hides all that from you the minute you click off a cell. There's black box programming and then there's just silliness. As for data-entry, ideally, that's not something that humans should be doing for anything but the most trivial concern. If you have huge columns of financial data or test results or what have you, then having someone type it into a computer is silliness of the highest order.
bliker 13y ago
I got theory. There is a limit what you can do with WYSIWYG editors. Once you reach the limit, the software starts getting in your way, hiding your errors and making you work harder. It applies for many software. From HTML to 3D modeling.
glaugh 13y ago
I think it's impossible to replace Excel en masse, so lots of folks are starting to pick off bits of it to replace. And hopefully in doing so they'll invest in making those bits a lot smarter than they are in Excel. Examples from the S12 YC batch alone: . VBA isn't great, so DataNitro is letting you use Python. . Grid is (mobiley) replacing the basic list-making use case of Excel. . (Stretch example:) Financial modeling of big personal finance decisions is a nice use case of Excel, but too hard for most people, so SmartAsset bakes those kinds of models into an on-site calculator. . Statwing is replacing pivot tables, which are clunky, devoid of statistics, do no error checking, etc.; in a few clicks Statwing will automatically choose, run, and interpret a statistical analysis, all the while looking for and alerting users to outliers or (some) other data issues. [I'm a cofounder. Also: https://www.statwing.com/demo https://www.statwing.com/demo] I'd expect that soon someone will come along soon and pick off the financial modeling use case in a way that's a bit more generalized than SmartAsset. Really tough UI challenge, but I think doable.
- Estragon 13y ago
  I suggest you change your statwing demo to something more positive.
SiVal 13y ago
If you are amused at what autocorrect does for writing, imagine the hilarity of economic decisions based on "smart" spreadsheets.
jacques_chester 13y ago
There are entire organisations and conferences about the dangers of spreadsheets[1] and there are now programming standards for develop spreadsheets[2]. Basically, the normal rules apply. If you want safe spreadsheets, you have to plan and verify. The reason this doesn't happen is because firstly, spreadsheets are very accessible. Every working large system evolves from a working small system, as John Gall observed. Excel et al make that evolution relatively easy. The second is that spreadsheets enable non-programmers to work with concrete concepts instead of the abstract ones that programming languages encourage. It's easy to visualise locations on a sheet when you are looking at the sheet. Finally, spreadsheets support calculation by propagation. They are an excellent declarative environment. Most programming languages do not support this model of programming (though we're groping towards it with concepts of binding). [1] http://www.eusprig.org/ http://www.eusprig.org/ [2] http://www.fast-standard.org/document/FastStandard_01b.pdf http://www.fast-standard.org/document/FastStandard_01b.pdf
justinlilly 13y ago
Excel will always be used BECAUSE its so free-form. http://readwrite.com/2013/06/11/excel-is-an-art-form-these-beautiful-images-are-proof#awesm=~o8w9EUvUTJDPlC http://readwrite.com/2013/06/11/excel-is-an-art-form-these-b...
vinchuco 13y ago
We need to think beyond the limitations of tools no matter how pervasive their use. It reminded me of : http://vimeo.com/66085662 http://vimeo.com/66085662 (you can skip to the demo)

41 points by turoczy 13y ago

Typed fields sound neat!

At a previous job, I tried to convince them (and succeeded in some cases) to build a domain-specific web app instead of sharing and e-mailing ever-changing Excel docs. I used CakePHP, and it was really easy to whip up a complete CRUD web-app with domain-specific information and DB tables, allow people to collaborate through a web interface, and be happy users. Some apps are tougher than others, I'll admit.

cmwelsh 13y ago

You can turn Excel spreadsheets into web applications quite easily with Google Apps Script. We wrote a REST interface to a massive multi tab Excel file recently and it only took like an hour, as opposed to days of reverse engineering the calculations (the client did not know what the equations in the file were because the employee who created it left). Basically I'm saying it will get much, much worse before it gets better.

roin 13y ago

I work with an army of very smart people who need to build incredibly complex models to drive our business. Like most companies, we turn to Excel. It's the only widely used application with a low enough barrier to entry that "non-technical" people can build legitimately complex (if not always robust) models. But the problems with Excel and general spreadsheet modeling limitations offer such a great opportunity for improvement that would impact just about every business out there. I wish I saw more people tackling this, or I had a great idea to do it myself. The problems I see are around barrier to entry, in that it must be usable in just a couple minutes, simple enough for non-programmers to learn, and equally or more efficient to get a basic model functioning. Otherwise I just don't see wide adoption despite possible maintenance, accuracy, and reliability benefits. James Kwak has written some smart stuff about this (http://baselinescenario.com/2013/04/18/more-bad-excel/ http://baselinescenario.com/2013/04/18/more-bad-excel/), and I'm interested in what Data Nitro (datanitro.com) is doing.

peteforde 13y ago
I think Data Nitro is really cool, and as a data geek the idea of having a real language available inside the Excel environment gets me very excited. Unfortunately, by increasing the power and capability of what a careless user can do, while expanding the learning curve and moving Python code to a different place than any cell-level functions or global VBA functions are stored... all of this just makes the potential for issues of human failure far greater.
- BrianEatWorld 13y ago
  Is there a reason you don't use one of the current data analysis languages like R, Stata, SAS, etc?
  - peteforde 13y ago
    I use those languages frequently, when they are the right tool for the job. Well, R and Stata, at least — but also Processing and D3 and Google Maps... Not sure how this is relevant to my concern, though.
elirubel 13y ago
Interesting and agreed. What if excel was very basic in functionality, and then as soon as you get into complex modeling or advanced functions you pull from a user generated (either private or public) template library. The trick would be in making the implementation of templating simple and intuitive. The goal behind templating would be to prevent complex formulas from being entered in tiny cells, and to leverage a userbase that has "been there, done that." Do you think that would shorten new hire ramp up in using existing complex models etc?
gruseom 13y ago
I worked in a similar environment and came to similar conclusions. In my view, your three requirements (usable without a big learning curve, intuitive to non-programmers, equally or more efficient than Excel) point directly back to the spreadsheet UI. Spreadsheet users get spreadsheets in a way they don't get anything else. It's their mental model and they love it and there's no way they're going to give it up. (In particular, there's no way they're going to migrate to even the simplest of general-purpose scripting languages.) Therefore the only thing that will get them off Excel is a new kind of spreadsheet. The question is, what would that look like? If it's too different from Excel, it won't meet your three requirements. But if it's too like Excel, there won't be any reason to use it, nor will it address Excel's limitations which are the subject of the OP. I've been thinking about and working on this ever since—it's a deeper problem than it appears to be! Edit: by the way, you're right (in my opinion) to emphasize barrier-to-entry as a great danger in this area. If you look at the history of attempts to innovate in the spreadsheet space (most famously Lotus Improv), that is the reef on which they tend to run aground.

ajscherer 13y ago

The author said it himself, these errors were caused by humans, not excel. I don't think making excel "smart" enough to prevent people from making dumb mistakes is a good idea. In fact I think that would transform excel into microsoft word, which is the only thing that could make life worse for your typical competent office worker. Excel already has a lot of this crap. It already requires an act of god to prevent excel from changing your string of digits into a number or date. It already shows you little exclamation point icons when your formulas omit adjacent rows or are different from other formulas in the same row/column. A tool will never make it possible for dumb people to solve hard problems easily. It's like trying to design a knife that makes it impossible to cut yourself. Nobody with any kind of a clue would want that knife. A tool should be straightforward and intuitive, but it shouldn't aim to be smarter than it's user.

thiele 13y ago
There is low hanging fruit in the problems to solve though. For example, finding and highlighting outliers in a column. It's a relatively simple feature but yields big benefits to users.
- pyoung 13y ago
  Except it isn't that simple. Your definition of an outlier may be completely different from some one else's (95th percentile, median/regression method, or simple max/min, some of these are already possible in excel). Then, how is the information displayed? Highlighting cells? Well if you have +10k rows of data, than that won't be too useful. Creating a summary in another column/sheet will add to the already cluttered 'results' spreadsheet, etc... This is why I recommend using programming based tools for data analysis. Any non-programming tool has to find a balance between the number of features offered and the complexity/ease-of-use of the tool. With programming tools, you merely have to find the right package (or build your own) which essentially results in getting the exact set of features that you need to solve your problem.
  - hamofgobelgope 13y ago

zvrba 13y ago

Hmm... Excel-like front-end to Haskell?

gruseom 13y ago
I would love to see someone try this.
malandrew 13y ago
This would be awesome.
jacques_chester 13y ago
For inspiration, consider SIAG: http://siag.nu/siag/ http://siag.nu/siag/

coderguy123 13y ago

Having worked in nyc financial world, I can say excel is here to stay - at least for foreseeable future. Heck, the only reason I have windows running in parallel in my MBA is excel. We use to have what we called "excel test" for all quants and analyst positions. We use to QA our excel sheets just like any other software application. I am surprised that many companies don't do that - it only makes sense.

pinaceae 13y ago
why? excel runs perfectly fine in its OSX version. which differences have you encountered?
- coderguy123 13y ago
  being very heavy excel keyboard shortcut user, assumed it wouldn't be the same in mac. never tried it.
  - pinaceae 13y ago
    fyi: you can re-map any keyboard shortcut through Tools->Customize Keyboard.
- bsg75 13y ago
  VBA, which was removed in Excel 2008 and returned in Excel 2011, is not fully compatible with Windows versions, where most users author code. Backend data connectivity options are virtually non-existant. Excel 2011 has what appears to be a 10+ year old version of MS Query. Some 3rd party financial plugins are Windows dependent, and I believe some of the Microsoft analysis additions are as well.
  - omni 13y ago
    You nailed it. I would use less generous language than you did to describe VBA's deficiencies in Mac Excel 2011. Huge parts of what could be considered the stdlib are totally missing in the Mac version. The language doesn't even have native dictionaries.

peteforde 13y ago

This is a problem I've spent a lot of time pondering. The author makes several suggestions; one in particular (a GitHub for datasets) is an idea I felt strongly enough about that I founded a start-up called BuzzData to address this concern. Unfortunately, we did not find our critical mass and the product has since successfully pivoted into an entirely different product called LookBookHQ. I do have another idea, which is to bring the concept of testing to the Excel world. I think that the combination of: - a framework for building up test cases that can be run against the data as part of the saving process (think rSpec) - an English-like, indented grammar for defining user stories that can potentially generate code for tests (think Cucumber) - a strong push for a culture of testing in the Excel community that would have to include Microsoft I dunno, honestly. Could be crazy. The culture might never accept testing. But then again, one of the basic ways to sell something is to give people insurance against humiliating themselves. It's possible that this thinking would make a lot of sense to the twice shy, highly risk-averse board members of the major financial institutions and governments of the world.

vladsanchez 13y ago
Started following LookBookHQ. =D Ever read "Specification By Example? That approach along with some of your suggestions could be used to prove your testable specification spreadsheet concept. The market awaits for you.
jacques_chester 13y ago
I thought of a similar idea, and so have others: http://www.sysmod.com/ http://www.sysmod.com/

pinaceae 13y ago

disagree completely. MS Excel is a masterpiece in software engineering, definitely the best piece of software MS ever created. Large pieces of the economy run on Excel, finance, controlling, etc. are unthinkable without it. the flexibility, ease of use, speed is astounding. applying colors to cells and then being able to sort by color still blows my mind - not the feature per se, but the fact that they included it and solved a common problem (how many times did a client mark something by color in a big spreadsheet...). excel is mobile, works offline. replacing it with some webapp or too much logic just shows the complete misunderstanding of its appeal.

AdamFernandez 13y ago
This. It's important to remember that from the perspective of millions of corporate users (not the hacker crowd), this is is THE tool. When you think about it, Microsoft really is Excel. That is their core. Why is it difficult for corporations to switch from Windows? Office. Why Office? Excel. If anyone attempted to create something that not only matched Excel (with all the messy file compatibility issues and macros), but surpassed it, they would be striking at the heart of Microsoft.
- thiele 13y ago
  Agreed. Although you could replace 'Excel' with 'Word' and still be just as correct.
  - thomasf1 13y ago
    Word isn´t the problem... Converting from Word to something else is some pain for users. Converting from Excel (especially Excel Macros) to something else is in the Millions of $ for developers/re-engineering of those Macros...
trapezoid 13y ago
Excel is a great tool, but it has its shortcomings. The article is highlighting the main one: it's easy to build huge, brittle systems with Excel. This immediately brings up questions: What tools exist for building robust spreadsheets? How can we encourage people to use them? Should we make better ones?

karamazov 13y ago

The fundamental problem with big spreadsheets is that they're complex pieces of software, and they're being designed by people who haven't studied software engineering. Building a complex program is hard. It's untenable if you don't approach it properly. This is true whether you're using Excel, Python, LISP, or anything else. Better tools can go a long way to help, but the ultimate answer is educating people on how to properly engineer systems. On that last point - at DataNitro[1], we let people script Excel with Python, which is a better tool than VBA or than doing things by hand. The result is that for a given level of complexity, you see fewer errors and more robust spreadsheets; but when you give people more power, they naturally build more sophisticated spreadsheets. All else being equal, this might result in more, not fewer errors. The great thing about introducing a new tool, though, is that there's also a chance to introduce new ways of working. Suddenly, people start building spreadsheets that work with version control and run unit tests. This helps tremendously with robustness and reliability. [1] https://www.datanitro.com https://www.datanitro.com

maxcan 13y ago
As a dynamically typed language, how does Python specifically yield fewer errors than VBA? Or even compared to C# or F#?

6d0debc071 13y ago

I dare say that the problem is less about Excel being dumb than that if you're interested in the underlying logic Excel hides all that from you the minute you click off a cell. There's black box programming and then there's just silliness. As for data-entry, ideally, that's not something that humans should be doing for anything but the most trivial concern. If you have huge columns of financial data or test results or what have you, then having someone type it into a computer is silliness of the highest order.

bliker 13y ago

I got theory. There is a limit what you can do with WYSIWYG editors. Once you reach the limit, the software starts getting in your way, hiding your errors and making you work harder. It applies for many software. From HTML to 3D modeling.

glaugh 13y ago

I think it's impossible to replace Excel en masse, so lots of folks are starting to pick off bits of it to replace. And hopefully in doing so they'll invest in making those bits a lot smarter than they are in Excel. Examples from the S12 YC batch alone: . VBA isn't great, so DataNitro is letting you use Python. . Grid is (mobiley) replacing the basic list-making use case of Excel. . (Stretch example:) Financial modeling of big personal finance decisions is a nice use case of Excel, but too hard for most people, so SmartAsset bakes those kinds of models into an on-site calculator. . Statwing is replacing pivot tables, which are clunky, devoid of statistics, do no error checking, etc.; in a few clicks Statwing will automatically choose, run, and interpret a statistical analysis, all the while looking for and alerting users to outliers or (some) other data issues. [I'm a cofounder. Also: https://www.statwing.com/demo https://www.statwing.com/demo] I'd expect that soon someone will come along soon and pick off the financial modeling use case in a way that's a bit more generalized than SmartAsset. Really tough UI challenge, but I think doable.

Estragon 13y ago
I suggest you change your statwing demo to something more positive.

SiVal 13y ago

If you are amused at what autocorrect does for writing, imagine the hilarity of economic decisions based on "smart" spreadsheets.

jacques_chester 13y ago

There are entire organisations and conferences about the dangers of spreadsheets[1] and there are now programming standards for develop spreadsheets[2]. Basically, the normal rules apply. If you want safe spreadsheets, you have to plan and verify. The reason this doesn't happen is because firstly, spreadsheets are very accessible. Every working large system evolves from a working small system, as John Gall observed. Excel et al make that evolution relatively easy. The second is that spreadsheets enable non-programmers to work with concrete concepts instead of the abstract ones that programming languages encourage. It's easy to visualise locations on a sheet when you are looking at the sheet. Finally, spreadsheets support calculation by propagation. They are an excellent declarative environment. Most programming languages do not support this model of programming (though we're groping towards it with concepts of binding). [1] http://www.eusprig.org/ http://www.eusprig.org/ [2] http://www.fast-standard.org/document/FastStandard_01b.pdf http://www.fast-standard.org/document/FastStandard_01b.pdf

justinlilly 13y ago

Excel will always be used BECAUSE its so free-form. http://readwrite.com/2013/06/11/excel-is-an-art-form-these-beautiful-images-are-proof#awesm=~o8w9EUvUTJDPlC http://readwrite.com/2013/06/11/excel-is-an-art-form-these-b...

vinchuco 13y ago

We need to think beyond the limitations of tools no matter how pervasive their use. It reminded me of : http://vimeo.com/66085662 http://vimeo.com/66085662 (you can skip to the demo)