Spreadsheet Fever May Suffer Spreadsheet Goofs
July 7, 2014
The data-analysis work of recently prominent economist Thomas Pikkety receives another whack, this time from computer scientist and blogger Daniel Lemire in, “You Shouldn’t Use a Spreadsheet for Important Work (I Mean It).” Pikkety is not alone in Lemire’s reproach; last year, he took Harvard-based economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff to task for building their influential 2010 paper on an Excel spreadsheet.
The article begins by observing that Pikkety’s point, that in today’s world the rich get richer and the poor poorer, is widely made but difficult to prove. Though he seems to applaud Pikkety’s attempt to do so, Lemire really wishes the economist had chosen specialized software, like STATA, SAS, or “even” R or Fortran. He writes:
“What is remarkable regarding Piketty’s work, is that he backed his work with comprehensive data and thorough analysis. Unfortunately, like too many people, Piketty used speadsheets instead of writing sane software. On the plus side, he published his code… on the negative side, it appears that Piketty’s code contains mistakes, fudging and other problems….
“I will happily use a spreadsheet to estimate the grades of my students, my retirement savings, or how much tax I paid last year… but I will not use Microsoft Excel to run a bank or to compute the trajectory of the space shuttle. Spreadsheets are convenient but error prone. They are at their best when errors are of little consequence or when problems are simple. It looks to me like Piketty was doing complicated work and he bet his career on the accuracy of his results.”
The write-up notes that Piketty admits there are mistakes in his work, but asserts they are “probably inconsequential.” That’s missing the point, says Lemire, who insists that a responsible data analyst would have taken more time to ensure accuracy. My parents always advised me to use the right tool for a job: that initial choice can make a big difference in the outcome. It seems economists may want to heed that common (and common sense) advice.
Cynthia Murrell, July 07, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
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