this post was submitted on 21 Oct 2023
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Scientists should be using programming languages like R or Python. They are both extremely popular in this field, much more than Excel.
Shoulda coulda. Not everyone is a programmer.
Except every scientist and analyst. Stats, data sci and ML is done in R and Python, be it astro, health data or genomics.
If someone has been taught stats in spreadsheet software, they have have been taught wrong, period.
Also, programming is a very strong term. we're talking about stats in a scripting language, not software development in CPP.
Research projects almost exclusively have more than one person working on them.
They should be if they're doing data analysis like this.
If it works, it works. Programming is a tough thing to learn.
Programming in R or Python isn't a lot harder than learning how to get Excel to do what you want. I'd wager it's easier since you don't have to fight your tools.
Excel has its place for simple quick calculations. But at some point it's simply the wrong tool.