This conversation is tending towards the more heated side. Heeding Greg's moderation, I will only address one part which I think is important.
> I think that this statement is utterly out of order - one) the quote prior > to this never claimed to be perfectly happy and two) who are any of us to > judge who should or shouldn’t be in academia - you don’t know what they > are using it for, what their background is or anything to contribute to > saying whether anyone should be academia. The fact of the matter is, Excel has been demonstrated time and again to be not just inefficient for scientific analysis but usually out-and-out wrong. Give me spreadsheet software that is not provably wrong and I will accept it as a useful tool for some types of researchers working with some types of data. I can see how the spreadsheet format can sometimes be useful; it's just that at the moment there isn't much good spreadsheet software out there. You question who am I to question other academics? Well, the academia I know does consist of academics holding each other to high standards. I didn't get my own degree by being patted on the back every time I produced a pie chart in Excel. Anyone claiming they're oppressed because I call Excel out on its bullshit does not indicate they take seriously the role of research as an advancer of human knowledge. Use Excel if you want. Just don't pretend that you're using sensible tools and don't ask me to put sugar on top when I tell you you're using crap software. As for students, they can be transitioned into better tools more smoothly if they are directed to take a Data Carpentry course. There is a reason I don't teach Data Carpentry myself! ;) ~ Tim _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.software-carpentry.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss_lists.software-carpentry.org
