I just don't get this sentiment. Nothing lets me model free-form questions as quickly, easily and effectively as opening up Excel. I get there are better tools for specialized or defined problems, but the spreadsheet is still my go-to general purpose tool.
The first 6 years of my career was working on data heavy applications. The statisticians on staff all used Excel to prototype their models. It's a great tool
Agreed. I have a degree in statistics, years of experience working with data analysis, closer 15 years working with python, know R etc. etc. But if I just want to quickly play around with some numbers to get a quick feel for a problem I almost always still fire up Excel first.
I just don't get this sentiment. Nothing lets me model free-form questions as quickly, easily and effectively as opening up Excel. I get there are better tools for specialized or defined problems, but the spreadsheet is still my go-to general purpose tool.