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Why You Shouldn't Use Spreadsheets For Important Work
An anonymous reader writes "Computer science professor Daniel Lemire explains why spreadsheets shouldn't be used for important work, especially where dedicated software could do a better job. His post comes in response to evaluations of a new economics tome by Thomas Piketty, a book that is likely to be influential for years to come. Lemire writes, 'Unfortunately, like too many people, Piketty used spreadsheets instead of writing sane software. On the plus side, he published his code ... on the negative side, it appears that Piketty's code contains mistakes, fudging and other problems. ... Simply put, spreadsheets are good for quick and dirty work, but they are not designed for serious and reliable work. ... Spreadsheets make code review difficult. The code is hidden away in dozens if not hundreds of little cells If you are not reviewing your code carefully and if you make it difficult for others to review it, how do expect it to be reliable?'"
"I don't know how to use spread sheets properly."
ugh...so anger! always with the nomenclature distinctions...this is a stupid approach to a real problem
a spreadsheet is a computer program
that's it...
to criticize the act of entering data and performing computations on that data using computer software is the height of ignorance
I don't know if he's right or not, but this guy's real criticizm, once you fight through his ignorance of the issue is that in his view Pickety didn't show enough of how he got his figures...or more accurately, the TFA author had to look at the spreasheet cell to see what formula it used (gasp!)
so he probably doesn't know how to use the interface of a spreadsheet very well, which makes the act of checking a formula tedious...
then he writes some dumbass article inventing a problem to vent his frustration and reinforce his self-image...
all the while missing the real problem with economics "research" (not Pickety but others do this...) it's called "P-hacking"
P-hacking is the problem in social science/economics research, not using 'spreadsheets'
gah!
Thank you Dave Raggett
It's not "spreadsheets shouldn't be used for important work", it's "spreadsheets should not be used for work that's not suitable for spreadsheets". Tools for the job, and all that.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
If the inability to code review spreadsheets was a real issue, it wouldn't be too hard to convert spreadsheet functions into a functional language. For non-programmers, a spreadsheet lowers the barrier to entry. This allows people to do something useful and productive who couldn't do so otherwise. That's a good thing.
Another major issues with spreadsheets is that they don't handle data typing issues very well. For example, if you try to add a list of numbers, and somewhere in the list you have a number encoded as text, instead of throwing an error, it won't be included in the sum. Errors should never pass silently. Unless explicitly silenced.
You're doing it wrong.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
The fact that Piketty's work describes a damning indictement of the USA's most cherished concept - free market capitalism - means that thousands of neo-liberal economists will pour over every single digit and operator in his spreadsheets looking for anything to negate the findings. If they can't find anything, they'll attack him. When you hear of character attacks against Piketty or some other diversionary tactic, you'll know his data is correct.
Tell that to the entire finance and insurance industry.
I figured this out twenty-mumble years ago.
I was doing data analysis in spreadsheets, and realized that I had no way to audit them.
The data and the analysis were all just...there...in the spreadsheet.
As soon as I got a grip on my data, I changed over to C programs that I could test, and document, and validate, and run at any time to demonstrate that input X generated output Y.
There's already tons of documentation of Piketty's many mistakes. And his "mistakes" all seem to support his thesis, which is a pretty big pill to swallow.
http://blogs.ft.com/money-supply/2014/05/23/data-problems-with-capital-in-the-21st-century/?Authorised=false
His bigger issue is that his data does not support his eventual conclusion that a wealth tax is necessary. It's a big jump from his data to that extreme solution.
My biggest issue is this: If R > G really trumped individual effort, why are the three richest men in the world (Gates, Buffett, Slim) all self made billionaires? If R > G was such a big deal, I would expect the richest person in the world to be a Rockefeller, or an heir from one of the other 19th century robber barons. Returns on investment have outpaced economic growth for a long time. It's clear that this is not the factor that Piketty makes it out to be. It's one thing to say that more and more will go to the top 1%. But if the top 1% changes every generation (and this is exactly what happens), is that as big of a problem as Picketty and other liberals make it out to be?
"I never worked in a company with normal people."
I'm guessing you haven't had the pleasure of working in the typical firm where the company's years-old ENTIRE lifetime of work and data is passed around e-mail as a 80MB Excel attachment.
Wow!
If I was in my early 20's, I'd probabbly think I was 'leet'
Now in my mid 40's, I'd probabbly fire whomever wrote it.
46137
if it can execute the operation needed for the research then it is acceptable...if not, then no
You could probably write this computational code in a shell script, too. But it would still be a terrible idea. Why? Because it's the wrong tool for the job. Simple as that. It doesn't matter what you can and cannot do, it matters what you should do, and you shouldn't use spreadsheets for anything complicated. It's simply too easy to make stupid mistakes that are difficult to trace and correct (or even notice).
you can't blame a spreadsheet for a poorly devised experiment...you *can* blame a researcher for using an inappropriate statistical model...you *cannot* criticize the method of analysis as long as it is physically capable of the computation
TFA isn't blaming the spreadsheets, he's blaming the people who use them for using them. It's not acceptable to use a tool that works poorly and is highly susceptible to mistakes, and no one should listen to anyone who does so unless that person is damned good at that tool: yes, it is possible that someone is so fantastically good with spreadsheets they can use them for massive data analysis with no problems. They are, however, the exception, and I would generally be inclined to disbelieve the results from anyone who does large work with spreadsheets (simply because of the possibility for errors and the lack of concern for accuracy that using spreadsheets demonstrates). So, the conclusion is that you shouldn't use spreadsheets for important work. You absolutely can criticize an analysis if it uses a tool that is highly likely to introduce errors, and that's fundamentally the point (and it's underscored by the fact that that is precisely what happened in Piketty’s case).
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
I really think Piketty deserves a lot of credit for releasing his "source" spreadsheets on such a substantive and controversial work. Most authors do not. If the critiques turn out to be substantial and extensive, I plan on waiting for a second edition with corrections before investing time in reading it.
Spread sheets are such awesome tools that they allow non-programmers to create the same problems that noob programmers do while writing code.
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