There's an important distinction between "seeing the data" (Excel is unarguably good at this) and "working with data" (Excel is unarguably poor at this).
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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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Replying to @o_guest @froggleston and
Olivia Guest | Ολίβια Γκεστ Retweeted Dorothy Bishop
What people seem to do is ENTER the data in Excel. This is disturbing. Please do not do that.https://twitter.com/deevybee/status/1031151509965352960 …
Olivia Guest | Ολίβια Γκεστ added,
Dorothy Bishop @deevybeeReplying to @ProfDataAargh. Are you not aware that sometimes a human being needs to intervene to input data? Not all data comes from a 'data collection program'. Sorry, but I've had enough of being told what I know this morning and I am going back to my data analysis (in R).3 replies 2 retweets 0 likes -
Replying to @o_guest @froggleston and
How should people do data entry? Assuming the data initially exists in some noncomputerised form?
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In my experience it usually boils down to either a spreadsheet or a forms based front end to a database. In the first case,
#LibreOffice Calc is much less likely to go rogue with your data than Excel. In either case, using double entry plus automated validation check is helpful.1 reply 0 retweets 1 like -
Replying to @davidbraze @deevybee and
Loads of recommendations that are not Excel and do not save as binary in this thread.
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I saw that, and confess thatm I've never used any of them. But double entry validation is important to me when hand keying data. Do you know if any of these other tools support that directly?
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Replying to @davidbraze @o_guest and
The only one I have experience in is OpenRefine, but it's not a data entry application. You'd need to create your dataset with whatever app suits (looks like some examples have CSVlint functionality), then post-validate and amend invalid/redundant fields with OpenRefine...
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Replying to @froggleston @o_guest and
Ideally, entry and validation are handled in same app. So, feedback to keyer (not me) is immediate and does not require my mediation
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Replying to @davidbraze @o_guest and
Excel? Sorry, too easy to pass up :D But seriously, I think this is the exact point - Excel/Google Sheets does both these things albeit sub-optimally, but for a biologist, they're pretty damn good for them.
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So you just mean better training and learning to save as csv, is the trick? I am totally down with that but sadly I have seen terrible advice both about binaries and about how to version (linked to in side-thread). So I am not convinced people are getting the subtler points here?
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