Excel Spreadsheets Are Dead for Big Data. Companies Need More Python Instead. | by Ari Joury, PhD | Nov, 2024

Opinion

Spreadsheets are bogging us down. For all of the reliance on Excel within the company world, clinging to it’s like making an attempt to run a Formulation 1 race in a broken-down automotive. Positive, it’s acquainted and widespread. And, to be truthful, it does work for a lot of duties starting from easy knowledge extraction in funding banking to pretty complicated insurance coverage pricing fashions.

Nonetheless, in terms of knowledge with 1000’s of entries, typically interrelated tables and sophisticated clusters, utilizing Excel can get downright harmful in terms of managing right now’s complicated knowledge. Take this: Excel’s row restrict is notorious, resulting in high-profile disasters just like the UK’s COVID-19 knowledge mishap, the place 1000’s of take a look at outcomes have been missed as a result of Excel’s constraints.

Or take into account the untold hours wasted double-checking guide entries, solely to finish up with experiences that may nonetheless fall sufferer to human error. The reality is that Excel is useless weight if you find yourself coping with knowledge evaluation from a sure stage of complexity onwards.

In an age the place even easy shopper apps deal with complicated knowledge quicker and with extra precision, why are we nonetheless coping with the…