this post was submitted on 27 Jan 2024
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Science Memes

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despite all my rage IT keeps me trapped like a rat in a cage. (mander.xyz)
submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 87 points 9 months ago (4 children)

Excel is a powerful tool. I was solving system of differential equations with Newton method in it. Sometimes it is easier than in Matlab (or Mathematica) if all you have is good understanding of how step-wise equations should look like, but not the differential equations themselves. Those steps may include if statements, for example.

[–] [email protected] 36 points 9 months ago

Had to do a similar project and it took me three full days of back and forth with another software before I found out EXCEL rounds small numbers in very weird ways.

Also, in EXCEL functions/formulas and data/values are wildly mixed.

(Not mentioning a plethora of other mildly infuriating quirks here)

[–] [email protected] 14 points 9 months ago (5 children)

What does it do that LibreOffice Calc doesn't do?

[–] [email protected] 34 points 9 months ago

Smooth scrolling.

Kind of serious, the lack of smooth scrolling makes Calc really horrible to use on a touchpad or with large/differing sized cells (formatted sheets with headers and such)

[–] [email protected] 27 points 9 months ago

Almost nothing, considering Calc is a clone. I don't think people are excluding LibreOffice from the list of smooth brain apps.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Not lagging horribly with big tables after calculating a simple formula? That's the only thing i can think of. Everything else is just very similar

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Oh but excel does lag heavily with any table over a couple megabytes, of course that's only on my computer

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago

You probably have apple stuff or Intel or windows /s

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago

Embed objects and query spaces from other Microsoft products, mainly.

It's a circular argument that all of the corporate world is too heavily invested in to change.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

Does libre office do pivot charts?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

Call me crazy, but the admittance matrix hw (Gaussian, G-S, Newton, N-R, etc.) I did last semester was much more intuitive for me on MATLAB than on Excel... but I'm gonna get screwed for that because a vast majority of companies would never bother to pay for MATLAB (+ Toolboxes) licenses.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago

There is always Octave.
And I am not claiming that Excel is better than Matlab. There are lots of tasks where Matlab is better, or where it is not even possible to use Excel with any efficiency. And yet, Excel IS a powerful tool for scientists and engineers. Not just for accountants.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

We have a single licence for matlab installed on an old laptop in the lab. I find it easier to program in Excel than try to reserve the laptop and go to the office (sometimes you reserve it and after arriving you find out that the last guy never returned it so you spend extra time trying to find where it is or who has it)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

Matlab excels at dgls, Excel does math not. Newton method isn't it