Читать книгу Computational Statistics in Data Science - Группа авторов - Страница 48

Much of statistical work today involves the use of Microsoft Excel and other spreadsheet‐style applications (Google Sheets, Apple Numbers, etc.). A spreadsheet application provides a simple and interactive way to collect data. This has an appeal for any manual data entry process. The sheets are easy to share, both through traditional file sharing (e.g., e‐mail attachments) and cloud‐based solutions (Google Drive, Dropbox, etc.). Simple numeric summaries and plots are easy to construct. More advanced macros/scripts are possible, yet most data scientists would prefer to switch to a more full‐featured environment (such as R or Python). Yet, as nearly all computer workers have some level of familiarity with spreadsheets, spreadsheets remain hugely popular and ubiquitous in organizations. Thus, we wager that spreadsheet applications will likely always be involved in statistical software and posit they can be quite efficient for appropriate tasks.