5 ms·

If I'm starting a company, don't I want R and E to satisfy an inequality (and one in a particular direction) instead of an equation? More seriously, Excel has

If I'm starting a company, don't I want R and E to satisfy an inequality (and one in a particular direction) instead of an equation? More seriously, Excel has many problems that make it unsuitable for anything that might require statistical analysis. See for example B.D. McCullough and Berry Wilson, "On the accuracy of statistical procedures in Microsoft Excel 2003," Comput. Statist. Data Anal. 49 (2005), no. 4, 1244--1252, available online at http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.csda.2004.06.016 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.csda.2004.06.016 but paywalled. I thought that this article, or a similar one, was recently discussed on HN, but I could not find an appropriate link. On the other hand, I don't know anything about business. I can see an argument for using a widely-deployed piece of software for verifying R > E even if it is inappropriate for data analysis.

Bsharp 13y ago
You definitely don't want to be using Excel for heavy data analysis or statistical analysis, and unfortunately some companies refuse to acknowledge that. Performance is very often sacrificed for familiarity and ease-of-use in business.
- desas 13y ago
  > Performance is very often sacrificed for familiarity and ease-of-use in business. And practically everywhere else, that's why we're not writing web apps in assembler.
  - collyw 13y ago
    Actually I think developer time (and cost) is probably the main reason we aren't writing them in assembler.
    - desas 13y ago
      Q. Why would assembler require more developer time? A. Because most developers aren't anywhere near familiar enough with assembler to do so and because ruby/python/php/etc are much much easier to use for developing a web app.
- einhverfr 13y ago
  Even as spreadsheets go, I wouldn't use Excel for statistical analysis (I wouldn't use any spreadsheet unless it was a function coded as a macro). It's not just a performance thing, but also a confidence in results thing. Spreadsheets admit to oversimplifying the processing and then having issues as the assumptions in the data change. This does not mean that a spreadsheet couldn't be an important piece of the pipeline though. Database to Spreadsheet is actually a very powerful combination, particularly with views.
  - Bsharp 13y ago
    Absolutely agree with you. Database-to-spreadsheet is the best way to analyze data then summarize the results in a business setting. Unfortunately, the people seeing the results occasionally want to see how you got to your numbers, and since they frequently have non-technical backgrounds the database step is often where they can no longer follow. I worked at a company where our data was in SQL Server but we basically had to import the entire data set into Excel because none of the higher-ups knew SQL and wouldn't be able to peer review. Those spreadsheets were slooooooow.
    - einhverfr 13y ago
      Wow, that sucks. It's funny, the other co-founder of Efficito is a financial analyst who writes tools to do his analysis for him in Lisp. He also maintains a Common Lisp implementation. Fortunately I bet your former employer would not be interested in his services.
      - malandrew 13y ago
        I'd love to see the source for what he's doing. Sounds neat.
        einhverfr 13y ago
        I am not aware of any ones he has released source for sadly. For a general idea though see http://weitz.de/eclm2013/abcl.pdf http://weitz.de/eclm2013/abcl.pdf It includes some code snippets and screen shots of hybrid Java/Lisp programs. He is also a maintainer of Armed Bear Common Lisp.
PeterisP 13y ago
Financials and statistics are two very different animals. In business usage, all your financial spreadsheets including forecasts will have a grand total of 0 statistical functions used; and your marketing/customer segmentation people, when a business starts to have them, will use some statistics but again, looking at your article (somehow not behind a paywall?) - there is zero overlap between the listed problems and with what those people will actually use. Good analysis of customer behavior (instead of just financials) can use all kind of heavy stats, but it's done by different people and at an different company stage than the original article is talking about; if you're starting a company you simply won't be doing any of that until after a million of other things.
- cokernel 13y ago
  Thanks, that helped me put the article into better context.

Bsharp 13y ago

You definitely don't want to be using Excel for heavy data analysis or statistical analysis, and unfortunately some companies refuse to acknowledge that. Performance is very often sacrificed for familiarity and ease-of-use in business.

desas 13y ago
> Performance is very often sacrificed for familiarity and ease-of-use in business. And practically everywhere else, that's why we're not writing web apps in assembler.
- collyw 13y ago
  Actually I think developer time (and cost) is probably the main reason we aren't writing them in assembler.
  - desas 13y ago
    Q. Why would assembler require more developer time? A. Because most developers aren't anywhere near familiar enough with assembler to do so and because ruby/python/php/etc are much much easier to use for developing a web app.
einhverfr 13y ago
Even as spreadsheets go, I wouldn't use Excel for statistical analysis (I wouldn't use any spreadsheet unless it was a function coded as a macro). It's not just a performance thing, but also a confidence in results thing. Spreadsheets admit to oversimplifying the processing and then having issues as the assumptions in the data change. This does not mean that a spreadsheet couldn't be an important piece of the pipeline though. Database to Spreadsheet is actually a very powerful combination, particularly with views.
- Bsharp 13y ago
  Absolutely agree with you. Database-to-spreadsheet is the best way to analyze data then summarize the results in a business setting. Unfortunately, the people seeing the results occasionally want to see how you got to your numbers, and since they frequently have non-technical backgrounds the database step is often where they can no longer follow. I worked at a company where our data was in SQL Server but we basically had to import the entire data set into Excel because none of the higher-ups knew SQL and wouldn't be able to peer review. Those spreadsheets were slooooooow.
  - einhverfr 13y ago
    Wow, that sucks. It's funny, the other co-founder of Efficito is a financial analyst who writes tools to do his analysis for him in Lisp. He also maintains a Common Lisp implementation. Fortunately I bet your former employer would not be interested in his services.
    - malandrew 13y ago
      I'd love to see the source for what he's doing. Sounds neat.
      - einhverfr 13y ago
        I am not aware of any ones he has released source for sadly. For a general idea though see http://weitz.de/eclm2013/abcl.pdf http://weitz.de/eclm2013/abcl.pdf It includes some code snippets and screen shots of hybrid Java/Lisp programs. He is also a maintainer of Armed Bear Common Lisp.

PeterisP 13y ago

Financials and statistics are two very different animals. In business usage, all your financial spreadsheets including forecasts will have a grand total of 0 statistical functions used; and your marketing/customer segmentation people, when a business starts to have them, will use some statistics but again, looking at your article (somehow not behind a paywall?) - there is zero overlap between the listed problems and with what those people will actually use. Good analysis of customer behavior (instead of just financials) can use all kind of heavy stats, but it's done by different people and at an different company stage than the original article is talking about; if you're starting a company you simply won't be doing any of that until after a million of other things.

cokernel 13y ago
Thanks, that helped me put the article into better context.