> Excel, and more importantly, the spreadsheet is the best way to build intuition for a dataset, hands down.
Excel is a low-dimensional, untyped, flat database. I couldn't think of something worse. It has been successful only because its design mimicked traditional accounting books. But for more complex datasets, ugh.
Back in NeXTSTEP days there was Lotus Improv (and later Lighthouse Design Quantrix). It permitted high dimensions, true names for rows, columns, hypercolumns, cells, and so on, and sophisticated modeling capabilities. It was, clean, required none of the ugly bug-filled hacks you see in Excel, and very easy to get your head wrapped around. Of course it's dead now.
> It permitted high dimensions, true names for rows, columns, hypercolumns, cells, and so on, and sophisticated modeling capabilities. It was, clean, required none of the ugly bug-filled hacks you see in Excel, and very easy to get your head wrapped around. Of course it's dead now.
Do named ranges in Excel not match some of what you're after here?
Excel is a low-dimensional, untyped, flat database. I couldn't think of something worse. It has been successful only because its design mimicked traditional accounting books. But for more complex datasets, ugh.
Back in NeXTSTEP days there was Lotus Improv (and later Lighthouse Design Quantrix). It permitted high dimensions, true names for rows, columns, hypercolumns, cells, and so on, and sophisticated modeling capabilities. It was, clean, required none of the ugly bug-filled hacks you see in Excel, and very easy to get your head wrapped around. Of course it's dead now.