If limited to just "seeing" the contents I would argue that is fine, although you do not need Excel to do that. Very expensive and bloated for just looking at some columns. Can be done better with better/smaller software.
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Universities and students often have Excel by default, so are used to using it. Showing them that Excel is bad at some things is vital, but most biologists *do* need Excel (or an open variant like LibreOffice, same difference).
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I'm not sure it's same diff really.http://www.sciencemag.org/news/sifter/one-five-genetics-papers-contains-errors-thanks-microsoft-excel …
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Other spreadsheet software will munge your gene names/dates. It's not just Excel. It's default formatting/user ignorance/poor automated error checking that spreadsheets suffer from, which is why we teach how to account for this in
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Replying to @froggleston @drchriscole and
Ah, that makes sense. But I am still worried about dependance on Excel. Can't we move to something more (financially) sustainable? It would help people who don't get free stuff from MS too.
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Replying to @o_guest @drchriscole and
LibreOffice is completely free, and is almost identical in terms of functionality.
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Replying to @froggleston @drchriscole and
I'm aware but have no idea if it's good. Don't use any spreadsheet software except Google Sheets and that very very rarely. My data comes from code I write myself so I'm in a diff boat and I can generate it to my needs 100%.
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Replying to @o_guest @drchriscole and
That sounds wonderful *quietly weeps*
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Replying to @froggleston @drchriscole and
I am shocked people enter and manipulate data in Excel in 2018. Genuinely still recovering from the shock.
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Replying to @o_guest @drchriscole and
At a recent training workshop in Nairobi, when we asked 14 biologist fellows what format their data is usually in, all of them said Excel. All of them. It's absolutely normalised in biology to use Excel for data input, validation, checking, and sharing.
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Wait! So not even .csv actually .xls? Eek. How do you even version control that?
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Replying to @o_guest @drchriscole and
I think you know the answer to that one :D
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Replying to @froggleston @drchriscole and
Sorry, yes, rhetorical question.
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