
DeepExcel – Deep learning in Excel - utkarshsinha
http://www.deepexcel.net/
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dimatura
Oh boy. I'm the second author. The official announcement will be in April 1st
at the SIGBOVIK conference
([http://sigbovik.org/2016](http://sigbovik.org/2016)), but I guess someone
broke the press embargo!

By the way: It works, try it ;)

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cs702
Very funny. A ton of people, I suspect, will take this seriously.

If I may, let me suggest you add a note about your future plans to add
backpropagation using Excel/Libreoffice macros, which "might allow users to
train large-scale models from scratch within their lifetime."

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dimatura
I think it's feasible, even without macros! Just have to make our case to our
advisors for it.

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crazycrazycrazy
What about a distributed version built in Google docs?

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kfk
You guys laugh, people in the business world would take this seriously and
check with their IT department if the Company has bought copies yet

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collinmanderson
It makes me wonder though: could excel formulas be sped up using the GPU?

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adrianN
Yes
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0P3Y8_2Dfo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0P3Y8_2Dfo)

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jaflo
Haven't tried the actual file yet, but the idea sounds interesting.

Not sure how academic papers are written normally, but do such papers normally
refer to open source licenses as "Commie"? And does anyone know what the
paper/project was created for?

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clickok
I suspect the project was created in preparation for the SIGBOVIK
conference[1] or similar. It's sort of a satirical or mock conference; these
guys have created a number of ingenious projects over the years[2], but this
one might be their masterpiece. Certainly it's going to give my own entry[3] a
run for its money.

\---

1\. [http://sigbovik.org/](http://sigbovik.org/)

2\. [http://oneweirdkerneltrick.com](http://oneweirdkerneltrick.com)

3\. A sort of analog neural net using a biological substrate to perform
communication and learning. Basically, I've trained some wild dogs I found in
the alley behind my apartment for function approximation. Originally I had
intended to use a pretty standard hill-climbing approach, but they kept
wandering away when I ran out of treats. My new method arranges them in a
series of layers for PAC (provably all canine) learning, with the gradients
transmitted by bark-propagation. I've not figured out how to implement
convolutional operations in this framework yet, so I might hold off on
publishing anything this year.

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intrasight
I laughed because it was funny. Then I laughed again harder when I realized
that it was supposed to be funny.

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malux85
The first table in the whitepaper - "Commie open source license" ... excellent

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intrasight
"Commie" was a strong enough hint, which make me read the whole thing again in
a different light.

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appleflaxen
For those who don't know: this is a satirical post.

It's kind of funny, I guess.

But I didn't assume it was a farce. I was genuinely excited to see the
implementation, because there is something unique about the transparency and
interaction you can have with an excel workbook. It's almost like a GUI for a
lisp REPL. Even if I am too dumb to understand the actual c code, I can see
the relevant numbers being crunched, how they relate, and more.

So... "good one. you got me."

But even as I sit here as the butt of the joke, I find myself wishing your
link had been sincere.

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r0n0j0y
Hilarious

'Excel is a trademark of Microsoft, we believe'

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trengrj
Would people who understand deep learning enough to apply it properly every
use Excel?

Every time I've used Excel for a complex problem I've regretted it. Even
simple things like joins using VLOOKUPs are incredibly clunky and error prone.

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akhilcacharya
This was funny, but honestly, I'm kind of surprised that people haven't
designed spreadsheet apps for data science needs (as far as I know, at least).

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typon
This is amazing

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mdjt
This made my afternoon. Thank you :)

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make3
Don't want to be an asshole but it really can't be called Deep Learning if it
doesn't do backprob. Deep inference, at best. The paper reads like a bad joke.

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quonn
That's because it apparently is actually a joke. "Website under construction!
Official Release Date: April 1st 2016."

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yeukhon
Not even April Fool yet and people begin to leak stuff ahead of time. _sigh_

