Poll asks within the decade. Your guess?
Within a decade, there’s a decent chance that AI can copy the data out of the source and into a useful template (which may well still be a spreadsheet) with better than 80% accuracy. But there’s still going to need to be a way for the analyst to fix the mistakes, which will sometimes be AI getting it totally wrong.
nitpick: Bank software is more likely to be COBOL; hardcore scientific computing is written in Fortran.
I do the formula mostly myself. But sometimes I need a Google search for help and sometimes AI (which I view as a super-Google-search) helps too.
I am not as practiced as I once was with Excel though (and I was at best a competent amateur even then). If you need help, get help. As you see the right answers you learn it.
Just be sure to check the math at each step. One little missed mistake can become a big problem as more stuff relies on what came before it. Can’t be lazy about this.
When you look at the time needed to check and correct AI it is not the timesaver many think it is. Still, it can help.
I answered rarely. But then I realized that my job involves a case management system, in which my pending caseload is arranged by various statuses, time in stats, assigned employee, etc. I suppose that could be considered a sort of spreadsheet. I will stay out of this thread because I apparently don’t grok this magical thing denoted a spreadsheet - as opposed to pretty much any representation of data.
This is very much like saying, “I don’t grok this magical thing denoted a word processor - as opposed to pretty much any representation of text.” There’s nothing magical about it, it’s just a specific and super-useful way to manipulate data, more complex than a table in a word processer and simpler than a relational database.
You are correct but it is worth noting that Excel can get you a long way if you are a small business. If there is one thing Microsoft ever did really well it is Excel.
With the proviso that I prefer Google Sheets, absolutely!
Decades ago, I worked some with relational databases, almost 100% through Microsoft Access. I designed a couple of databases to help nonprofits manage donor and contact lists–nothing special, but I integrated things like data-entering a donation, printing an acknowledgement letter, and batch-printing letters and mailing labels to everyone whose most recent donation was older than 11 months and hadn’t yet received a membership reminder. That would’ve been really difficult to do with a spreadsheet. These days I don’t do anything so complicated, but still use spreadsheets all the time.
People are talking about the need to learn spreadsheets and their usefulness. AIUI, spreadsheets are just charts for compiling and presenting data. Not sure why people are discussing them as tho they are something more. But, my ignorance is approaching threadshittery, so I’ll stop.
Thanks. I am well able to compile and interpret data organized in rows and columns. I’m carrying over from the prior thread, but there you indicated that you were not advocating teaching kids how to use software to compile spreadsheets. I agree that every student ought to learn how to organize information in this manner. I do not believe this is anything new. I certainly learned it in the 60s-70s. Many people swear by Excel and other software. I understand that such tools are vital for some vocations. I am glad to have been able to avoid any need to learn/use them.
And that - with apologies for a protracted departure, will be the last I say on the topic.
That’s not correct (unless you mean something different when you say “compile” than I think you mean), but I’ll address that in a different thread if you want it to be clarified; just ask me there!
Okay. Part of the underlying theme here is what specific skills are worth teaching in grade school, with the understanding that some things are worth teaching because you will highly probably need to use that specific skill later on, and some because learning the skill develops other skills and understandings, habits of mind even, that have broader value.
Somewhat related to the arguments regarding a liberal college education vs a specific vocational program?
I’d love to see a thread in which people nominate the classes that had large amounts of other impacts with little use to the specific skill itself. Like for me geometry proofs taught a way of approaching problems that I think impacted me significantly even though I don’t do geometry as an adult. Included could be skills not taught that should be.
But I can’t come up with a clear title for that. I feel I’m struggling even to clearly articulate it in these many words.
Help here?
I do think this is valuable, and if I can figure out a way to frame it, I’ll be happy to start it. My own daughter recently asked me, “No offense, but why is ELA [English Language Arts] important after like fourth grade?” and my answer had a lot to do with reasoning, understanding rhetorical techniques both so they could be recognized and so they could be used, and so on. It is not, of course, important that anyone have read Huckleberry Finn or whatever, but it is important that people have grappled with complex and beautiful texts in a way that helps them understand both language and humanity.
In the spirit of the original question -
I think basic spreadsheet usage should be taught in High School. Excel/Google Sheets are exceptionally versatile tools for visualizing and analyzing data. I’ve used them both extensively - for academic, professional, and personal use. Are there more specialized/appropriate tools for some applications? Absolutely. For most of them, can you replicate their essential functions with Excel, since you probably already have it on your computer? Absolutely. A High School student doesn’t need to know how to set up and use pivot tables, VBA scripts, and complicated formulas, but they should learn the basic concepts, the proper way to organize data in excel and basic charting, calculations, and graphing. This can and should be taught and used in the math and science classes they are already taking, at the very least.
As far as AI, I don’t see it completely replacing a spreadsheet anytime soon. AI is great for helping with setting up spreadsheets, generating Excel equivalents of complicated formulas, scripting, and analyzing data already in a sheet. But if you take a bunch of raw data and just throw it at Claude, more often than not, to do anything useful with it, you need to give it at least a CSV file anyway, and it’s going to approach it in ways that already mimic a spreadsheet. Students need to be taught how to properly use AI to accomplish tasks, and that takes more than just throwing a bunch of raw numbers at it and asking for pretty graphs and a comprehensive analysis.
But how many people actually end up in careers where they have to work with data and calculations at all? That seems like a niche only for a few white collar jobs.
High schoolers don’t have infinite time to learn every tool that they’ll likely never need to use, especially in a society that’s already oversaturated with knowledge workers competing with themselves and their overseas counterparts.
Why not spend their time on topics more generally applicable, like civics or parenting or household financial management, nutrition and weight management, etc.? Having more spreadsheet users won’t really make any sort of noticeable dent in society, but there are many other crises that education can help soften.
Spreadsheets are just a job skill that can be taught in appropriate majors or on the job. They don’t need to be a foundational part of our education any more than, say, vector graphics or coding or databases.
You know what’s a GREAT tool for household financial management?
The thousand apps that are more user friendly and less error prone than making your own in a spreadsheet?
Edit: And even if they want to use a spreadsheet for that, it would rarely need to be used for more than basic arithmetic and averages and such. It’s more the underlying concepts that matter, not the app you use to manage them.
I dunno, case in point, my partner is a vet tech who never learned to use spreadsheets, while I’m a software developer who’s used them since childhood. Yet she has by far the better grasp of her finances because she does it old school every paycheck, pen and paper and maybe a calculator. I put all mine into a spreadsheet and then forget to look at it or update it after a few months. It’s not a tooling issue…
#4: Data Scientists
#5: Information Security Analysts
These are the top growing fields, not top absolute numbers
For absolute numbers, look here:
https://www.careeronestop.org/Toolkit/Careers/careers-largest-employment.aspx
The first job on the list that requires any formal education – #4 – is “general and operations managers,” which is absolutely a job that requires an ability to analyze, manipulate, and communicate about complex datasets.
It’s worth disregarding jobs on the list that have “no formal educational requirements,” since we’re talking about what should be an educational requirements. Setting those jobs to the side, most of the most-common jobs on the list require similar data analysis skills.
So which of those thousand finance apps should the schools use in the financial management class? or just show them how you can accomplish all of the basic tracking and decision making needed by setting up an Excel sheet? Sure you can do it by hand with pen and paper and maybe a calculator every pay check, but a spreadsheet is an easy way to give that more structure and make less work for yourself. If you have a spreadsheet but never use it, that’s a user issue, not a tool issue.