Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Re: Numeracy and Excel

Author:Phil Wolff
Posted:4/25/2000; 11:06:33 AM
Topic:Email to Brian Behlendorf
Msg #:16671 (In response to 16624)
Prev/Next:16670 / 16672

The fact is, few people are actually able to see how bad Word and Excel really are, because few people know how much better it could be.

Sad fact: Americans are highly innumerate. Ask cab drivers to calculate a percent or a currency conversion and they are lost without a calculator. Watching people use Excel, most people use it as a souped up calculator instead of the modeling and simulation tool it is.

You are right: tools like Javelin and CrystalBall brought different ways of thinking and visualizing numerical and financial data. But their lack of success has never been Microsoft's fault. There are too few people who've had both the education to understand them and the costly problems to solve. Javelin died and Crystal Ball is now a niche consulting/software firm.

By the way, the surest way to have Microsoft improve an area of their products is to create a free or cheap plug-in, get it used widely, and prove demand. That's how spell checking, grammar checking, charting, tables, scenarios and many other features (you might now consider bloat) have emerged.

- phil

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