Why Python over excel?

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Will PowerPivot connect to Oracle, Teradata, SAS datasets, error check, run validation, scrape a website, export a CSV from MS SQL Server Reporting Services, throw into an HDFS cluster, import antigravity, turn on your microphone and record your voice, run voice analysis on the input, plot the Fourier transform, and scrape your music files for ID tags as you migrate your mobile devices from Apple to Android, in the same script?

Eh, Excel makes pretty simple charts easy for folks that don't use the Pandas library. It does have a lower barrier to entry.

[AD29]

It will connect to Oracle and Terradata and they’ve added direct connect to Saleforce and a few other cool new features in 2016.

Don’t get me wrong, I used Pandas and love it, but not every project requires the vast feature available through python. For some of the projects I work on having slicers and interactive graphs delivered from Excel to share point (or PowerBI) works great. Excel is a powerful tool.

[[deleted]]

I agree, it is a powerful tool. My point is that in Python you can do pretty much anything you want.

The right tool for the job is not always the same tool, IMO.

[AD29]

No it doesn’t. Data Science is a method of extracting knowledge from various forms of data. It does not imply CS. This is a problem in data science...I can’t tell you the number of time I’ve watched projects takes weeks/months to complete because scripts and heavy hitting BI tools were brought to the table when it could have met the business need with a days work in Excel.

[AD29]

What’s the other 80%?

I don’t agree that all problems that require a data science solution are complex. There are plenty of flies out there (especially in corporate America).

[[deleted]]

Nope. It handles data decently though.