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posted by chromas on Friday August 07 2020, @04:20AM   Printer-friendly
from the ' dept.

Scientists rename genes because Microsoft Excel reads them as dates:

Microsoft Excel’s automatic formatting is normally helpful for finishing spreadsheets quickly, but it’s proving to be an agent of chaos for geneticists. The Verge has learned that the HUGO Gene Nomenclature Committee has issued guidelines for naming human genes to prevent Excel’s automatic date formatting from altering data. MARCH1 (Membrane Associated Ring-CH-Type Finger 1), for example, should now be labeled MARCHF1 to stop Excel from changing it to 1-Mar.

The names of 27 genes have been changed in the past year to avoid Excel-related errors, HGNC coordinator Elspeth Bruford said. This isn’t a rare error, either, as Excel had affected about a fifth of genetics-related papers examined in a 2016 study.

Journal Reference:
Mark Ziemann, Yotam Eren, Assam El-Osta. Gene name errors are widespread in the scientific literature [open], Genome Biology (DOI: 10.1186/s13059-016-1044-7)


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  • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 07 2020, @04:24AM (7 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 07 2020, @04:24AM (#1032719)

    Scientists & Engineers!!
    Please repeat after me:

    Excel is a business tool, it's not for scientific or engineering calculations beyond the most simple sort that you might otherwise do manually. Spreadsheets in general are crap for precise work, we used to have problems with Lotus 1-2-3 as well.

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  • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 07 2020, @04:59AM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 07 2020, @04:59AM (#1032743)

    Nice soap box! Now all you have to do is tell everyone in the whole world hundreds of times over and over again. That'll work.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 07 2020, @12:09PM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 07 2020, @12:09PM (#1032824)

      Actually, I only have to tell the engineers that work for me. Done (many years ago).

      Here's an ancient page (amazing it's still live) that covers some Excel problems in a practical context:
          http://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/comptoolsExcel.html [fourmilab.ch]

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 07 2020, @02:50PM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 07 2020, @02:50PM (#1032916)

        So why the fuck are you telling me, shithead?

        • (Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 07 2020, @05:37PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 07 2020, @05:37PM (#1033021)

          Have you tried getting up on the other side of the bed?

  • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday August 07 2020, @03:00PM (1 child)

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Friday August 07 2020, @03:00PM (#1032927) Journal

    Scientists & Engineers!!
    Please repeat after me:
    Excel is a business tool

    Wah . . . wait . . . so you're saying, . . . er . . . I thought Excel was a database! The world's best database. Separate tables could be kept as sheets within a single XLSX workbook file.

    --
    People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 07 2020, @03:10PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 07 2020, @03:10PM (#1032931)

      Nonono.
      Excel is electronic squared paper.
      With badly designed squares, actually, that tend to change size over time.

  • (Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Friday August 07 2020, @09:55PM

    by Joe Desertrat (2454) on Friday August 07 2020, @09:55PM (#1033187)

    Excel is a business tool, it's not for scientific or engineering calculations beyond the most simple sort that you might otherwise do manually.

    It's not even good for that. Unless you use a function that absolutely cuts off decimal places after calculating and rounding, you'll find it introduces random errors several decimal places down the line. Not a big deal when calculating totals overall, but if you are doing checks to make sure data is correct you'll find it showing errors because it stuck a 1 fifteen decimal places in. Of course, the harsh rounding also creates errors of its own. I can throw in an off topic complaint about the ribbon too, which slows me way down compared to drop down text menus, and when you toss having to subscribe to Office 365...