There's a new page on the Burns Statistics website http://www.burns-stat.com/pages/Tutor/spreadsheet_addiction.html that looks at spreadsheets from a quality assurance perspective. It presents R as a suitable alternative to spreadsheets. Also there are several specific problems with Excel that are highlighted, including the status of statistical functionality in Excel. Patrick Burns Burns Statistics patrick at burns-stat.com +44 (0)20 8525 0696 http://www.burns-stat.com (home of S Poetry and "A Guide for the Unwilling S User")
Patrick, A very interesting and useful read, but following up on your final point, should anyone be interested, Quatro Pro allows for 18,000 columns rather than the 256 columns of Excel, and has done for as many versions back as I can remember. Not being expert enough in R I have found that this ability of Quattro allows me to prepare a data set for importing into a Stats program that is far larger than Excel can cope with. Having said that, like most people, my day to day spreadsheet is Excel. Graham> -----Original Message----- > From: r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch > [mailto:r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch] On Behalf Of Patrick Burns > Sent: 03 January 2005 10:55 > To: R Help, Listserve > Subject: [R] spreadsheet addiction > > There's a new page on the Burns Statistics website > http://www.burns-stat.com/pages/Tutor/spreadsheet_addiction.html > that looks at spreadsheets from a quality assurance > perspective. It presents R as a suitable alternative to > spreadsheets. Also there are several specific problems with > Excel that are highlighted, including the status of > statistical functionality in Excel. > > Patrick Burns > > Burns Statistics > patrick at burns-stat.com > +44 (0)20 8525 0696 > http://www.burns-stat.com > (home of S Poetry and "A Guide for the Unwilling S User") > > ______________________________________________ > R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help > PLEASE do read the posting guide! > http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html > > > > __________ NOD32 1.953 (20041219) Information __________ > > This message was checked by NOD32 antivirus system. > http://www.nod32.com > >
I am moving to using R more and more as a computational platform and I use Microsoft Excel at the moment in exactly the way you describe in WRITING ASCII FILES as a staging area for data, to gather data and make simple calculations. I've have experienced problems with saving to .csv files, and not only using scientific notation. The problem occurs also in normal notation if you choose to show only some decimals. That is a serious problem, what is the remedy? To always avoid showing only some decimals and avoid scientific notation or does someone have a better solution, like a global option, Save with full represention to .csv. I'm open for all sorts of suggestions, including ditching Excel...and use ??? Cheers, Henrik Patrick Burns wrote:> There's a new page on the Burns Statistics website > http://www.burns-stat.com/pages/Tutor/spreadsheet_addiction.html > that looks at spreadsheets from a quality assurance perspective. It > presents R as a suitable alternative to spreadsheets. Also there are > several specific problems with Excel that are highlighted, including > the status of statistical functionality in Excel. > > Patrick Burns > > Burns Statistics > patrick at burns-stat.com > +44 (0)20 8525 0696 > http://www.burns-stat.com > (home of S Poetry and "A Guide for the Unwilling S User") > > ______________________________________________ > R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help > PLEASE do read the posting guide! > http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html >
I get around the dependence on how things are displayed in Excel by
using
VBA to write my data files. Then you get full precision and you can use
white space as a separator if you like.
Sub WriteRangeToFile(rData as Excel.Range, fName as String)
Application.ScreenUpdating = False
Application.Calculation = xlCalculationManual
Application.StatusBar = "Writing Data File " & fName
Dim ofs As Object, ots As Object
Dim vData As Variant
Dim r As Long, rCount As Long
Dim c As Long, cCount As Long
Set ofs = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
vData = rData.Value
Set ots = ofs.CreateTextFile(fName, True)
cCount = UBound(vData, 2)
rCount = UBound(vData, 1)
For r = 1 To rCount
str = ""
For c = 1 To cCount - 1
str = str & vData(r, c) & " "
Next c
str = str & vData(r, cCount)
ots.WriteLine (str)
Next r
ots.Close
Set ots = Nothing
Application.ScreenUpdating = True
Application.Calculation = xlCalculationAutomatic
Application.StatusBar = False
End Sub
You can call this from another macro to set the range to a selection,
e.g., and the filename to the contents of some cell.
HTH,
David Reiner
-----Original Message-----
From: Henrik Andersson [mailto:h.andersson at nioo.knaw.nl]
Sent: Friday, January 14, 2005 5:38 AM
To: r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch
Subject: Re: [R] spreadsheet addiction
I am moving to using R more and more as a computational platform and
I use Microsoft Excel at the moment in exactly the way you describe in
WRITING ASCII FILES as a staging area for data, to gather data and make
simple calculations. I've have experienced problems with saving to .csv
files, and not only using scientific notation. The problem occurs also
in normal notation if you choose to show only some decimals.
That is a serious problem, what is the remedy?
To always avoid showing only some decimals and avoid scientific notation
or does someone have a better solution, like a global option, Save with
full represention to .csv.
I'm open for all sorts of suggestions, including ditching Excel...and
use ???
Cheers, Henrik
Patrick Burns wrote:> There's a new page on the Burns Statistics website
> http://www.burns-stat.com/pages/Tutor/spreadsheet_addiction.html
> that looks at spreadsheets from a quality assurance perspective. It
> presents R as a suitable alternative to spreadsheets. Also there are
> several specific problems with Excel that are highlighted, including
> the status of statistical functionality in Excel.
>
> Patrick Burns
>
> Burns Statistics
> patrick at burns-stat.com
> +44 (0)20 8525 0696
> http://www.burns-stat.com
> (home of S Poetry and "A Guide for the Unwilling S User")
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide!
> http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
>
______________________________________________
R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list
https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
PLEASE do read the posting guide!
http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html