On Sun, Jul 18, 2010 at 4:19 AM, Andreas Guelzow <[email protected]> wrote: > Well, I had a look at the Quantrix website and if they have a useful > product then they definitely have a bad marketing team since there intro > essentially only causes yawns with respect to their simple pivot tables. > Assuming they are showing their most exciting application, I would not > find it useful to consider further.
Take a look at the "Tutorial", in addition to the intro. The intro showed a relatively simple analysis, whereas the analysis in the Tutorial got rather more sophisticated than that. If you can think of an elegant way to do the analysis in the Tutorial -- especially if different revenue/cost growth rate assumptions are used for different regions or products, then I'd be very curious to know how you'd do it. It seems like precisely the kind of problem I've dealt with in the past where the lack of ability to impose structure makes formula robustness and flexibility a nightmare. > I would not deny that some users like to use the wrong tool for their > problems. But just because some users use spreadsheets when they should > be databases or statistical software does not make spreadsheets bad. This is a fair point. The data I work with isalways stored in databases, which means that a PivotTable often suffices for me. But while it is easy to query data in relational format, it is hard to work with them and do some kinds of multi-stage analysis. I'm a great fan of the relational model for data storage and preparation, but I'm just not sure how to use it effectively in actual data analysis or financial model-building. > Well, to me "Quantrix-like functionality" means reasonable data slicers > (or pivot tables). Those are in the works. For me this has little to do > with separation of presentation, formulas and data. > > Andreas Maybe I am wrong and this is essentially all they have to offer. But I think the Tutorial shows there is more -- or even just potentially more. But 80/20 thinking might lead me to say you're correct, if the potential user base for such features is small and we find it hard to argue they're revolutionary. I think this is the fundamental question -- is the idea just PivotTables or something bigger. I found out about Quantrix because I started doing research after thinking about the inefficiencies of spreadsheets. I experienced the flaws, reasoned about them, and then tried to find products offering something better. I'm not holding Quantrix out as a model, but just one example that tries to address some of the flaws. I wish we could focus on discussing the flaws themselves, not just Quantrix. Jonathan _______________________________________________ gnumeric-list mailing list [email protected] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnumeric-list
