

The mysterious powers of Microsoft Excel - schrofer
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22213219

======
ffffruit
There is a similar article published in a notable bioinformatics journal
explaining how errors were introduced when Excel was used and altered gene
names irreversibly.

<http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2105/5/80>

------
JacobAldridge
A nice rebuttal to some of the other articles going around. I am reminded that
it is a poor workman who blames their tools.

(And that covers choosong the wrong tool for the job.)

~~~
peatmoss
I object to excel for quantitative analysis on the grounds that it is
impossible to demonstrate anything that might give one confidence in an
analysis. There's no record of the steps taken to transform data. By contrast,
in R, you can start all the way at the beginning and trace everything that is
done to your data, right up to your final answers. You can explore the data
without wondering if you've accidentally performed the Sort of Ulimate
Corruption.

It's like algebra class: no credit unless you show your work. And in excel,
there really isn't a good way to show your work.

~~~
diroussel
You can trace your work in excel. What ever tool you use, you need to verify
your results in another tool.

