this post was submitted on 21 Oct 2023
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“Real analytical work” (I will take that to mean work people actually care about and may even pay good money for), is done with whatever does the job, on the given timeframe, and the analyst, researcher, or team are comfortable with. That may well be Excel. Or not. Depending on the task and people. But your audience will always care more for the appropriateness of your analytical approach for the given audience and task, and of course your results, rather than the tools you used to get there. Of course spreadsheets have limitations and one will do well to know them.
I have already seen data having to be thrown away because the researcher copied and pasted it incorrectly from multiple spreadsheets and no one could tell what the correct data was anymore. No one should be doing this if they are responsibly doing "real analytical work".