Comment by bachmeier

Excel is great until it isn't. As one example, I've had grad students tell me about a surprising result they found when they did some simple descriptive statistics in Excel. When I ask them to show me, or to check something else, they can't replicate their finding. Then the inevitable "Oh, I grabbed the wrong column" or some such after ten minutes of playing around with it. The thing that makes Excel convenient but dangerous is the lack of guardrails.