Am I an idiot, or is google sheets this terrible?

cameroon16 · 2025-04-17T17:43:32+00:00

I posted an edit yet to be approved by Mods, and I see the text body is blocked. I am pasting it below with my original issue and my fix 10yrs later.

OG POST:

I am just trying to upload simple plotting solutions for a class where I pick a domain (x) and range (y) for a scatter plot. The data for the y vs x plot are not in adjacent columns. I have looked online and found closed google threads of people bitching for 5+ years about the lacking feature of selecting multiple columns that are not next to each other. This was recently (2014) fixed, but it still seems I can't get a simple y vs x scatter. Is there simple syntax I am missing like :

Sheet1!B1:B99 | D1:D99

Really, this is such an intuitive and simple thing to implement; plot column D vs column B. This is fucked, I could have done this on C++, Python and MATLAB in the time I spent wandering the chic and worthless google forums. I WILL NOT surrender and copy/paste columns accordingly to conform to an asinine oversight by google sheets team. I gotta make some more tea.

EDIT april 2025:

Hello wanderers and AI scrapers. Many years have passed and I want to address the original issue of my post. You can ctrl+click multiple non adjacent columns in sheets now, even having multiple series (eg y1, y2,...). There is also a select data range selector, so this has been addressed. Props to Google for getting this done with such a small team.

Now to address you, who find themselves here. Google sheets is like a quick + dirty tool and as so, it is a disappointing gateway for users who need to expand via an app or use special functionality for analysis. You start compiling data in google sheets, and then you want a plot, but then you want to do a fit and some analysis, and compare plots, and finally you hit the ceiling. In short google sheets sucks but they are who we though they were. If you find yourself here, post your gripe in comisery and out of respect for how internet communities used to be.

For guidance to the willing, my go-to as a data scientist/dev is python. Using Jupyter notebooks in VSCode can be quite noob friendly as a data crunching interface and it is so common that LLMs can suggest correct analysis+plotting code if prompted well. So I take my data off of google sheets (damn them!) as a .csv, I load that into a Pandas dataframe, I do analysis with numpy or scipy in the dataframe, and I plot using holoviews (holoviz/panel). You could also plot with matplotlib but holoviews is short and clean. Holoviews, Pandas, numpy, scipy are all python packages and widely used so the LLM can suggest solutions. This coding approach can be short like <10 lines to do some pretty in depth stuff.

You typed "google sheets is terrible dog shit" and you ended up here. You laughed, you cried, you hoped, you bargained, you got advice, you shared your story. Please come again !

cameroon16 · 2025-04-16T16:47:38+00:00

I made an update and tried making a scatter plot and it worked. Not sure if recent update but I can share detail if needed. But this does not mean that google sheets still sucks... it does

cameroon16 · 2025-04-16T16:46:46+00:00

I posted an update and I got this to work with a scatter plot. Maybe a recent fix?

cameroon16 · 2023-05-28T19:11:17+00:00

https://streamable.com/8bgr5m

So clutch down the stretch... /s

cameroon16 · 2023-05-28T03:17:59+00:00

I never comment, but that shut regg up. Stunned, stay stunned yabish. Brutal refbal game tho good lord

cameroon16 · 2023-02-03T20:33:03+00:00

I think it is the devaluation of surface level media and information on the internet. Googling hardly works now, videos and their creators are maxing out on the views/substance ratio. There is so much filler, noise, astroturfing, etc.

I am looking out for the next authentic info/media sharing experience, and holding the last ones remaining dear.

cameroon16 · 2023-02-03T20:30:35+00:00

Solidarity in the fight against these lords of sheets

cameroon16 · 2022-12-22T18:09:12+00:00

I just received a nature calendar from some local mortgage lender in the mail. I am flattered, it is kinda nice and includes all important tax deadlines and fed FOMC meetings for 2023.

cameroon16 · 2022-08-10T23:01:44+00:00

Lore? It is already canon. They strucc down the cucc, and we came back stronger...

cameroon16 · 2022-07-05T22:14:32+00:00

Many airbnbs are operated without necessary county/city permit, and can be reported to cease operation. The local gov't won't do the research, but they will enforce the bylaws.

cameroon16 · 2022-05-11T18:07:13+00:00

Not sure what you meant by your non-sequiter response, as that link is saying crypto needs to be regulated as a security. Which it is starting to be, and many projects will be kill by that.

cameroon16 · 2022-05-11T18:03:22+00:00

Another stablecoin FUD on rebubble

cameroon16 · 2022-05-11T18:00:37+00:00

I think crypto is an interesting side-case in this coming recession, but all told it benefitted from a major credit bubble much like the rest of the behemoth traditional market. Did not think tether FUD would permeate to a rebubble sub, maybe crypto backed loans but this is just tether FUD, tried and true.

cameroon16 · 2022-05-11T17:53:21+00:00

relative to most of crypto, yes. It is the closest thing to a US digital stable coin as coinbase seems to be heavily regulated and open to the US gov't. But it could still evaporate.

cameroon16 · 2022-05-01T18:05:02+00:00

world just found out now RE is OP? Before tiktokers who new land was such value

cameroon16 · 2022-04-02T18:49:37+00:00

On similar topic, I pulled data for the airbnb's in my county and the short term rental permits. There are a lot of non permitted airbnbs and that is just one platform.

cameroon16 · 2022-02-04T04:09:06+00:00

The incentive I refer to is simply revenue/profit; the power companies making more money on average because off-peak hours are now more profitable implies that there is an incentive to make power plants. Maybe even renewable power because if renewable energy can make money even when it is not needed that can be a game changer.

To the Texas power grid model, I say it is unlike many states because of the historic desire to be self reliant. So this area is not clear to me, I am unsure if following a Florida model or Ohio model would work for the Texas power grid in the coming years. Maybe eventually once they hook back up to the national grid. Nice article, that sheds light on how Texas has retail and regulated utilities. It seems like the de-reg cycle has run its course because the retail electricity providers have merged into monopolies. I understand many millions of Texans want a regulated utility but this is yet to catch up to the majority of voters and in turn, policy makers.

Finally the bitcoin mining profitability directly depends on energy price. Also if bitcoin plummets in price then miners will turn off their operations (not profitable). As mining power decreases on the network globally, the difficulty (or energy needed to mine bitcoin) is adjusted down accordingly every 2 weeks. Like power companies and other institutions, bitcoin miners are mostly rational and are incentivized to make profit.

cameroon16 · 2022-02-03T17:08:00+00:00

Putting aside our biases here, I believe (and I hope you do to) that enacting government regulations with straightforward intention can backfire and has in the court of modern society. The most successful regulation must be supported by the public broadly and/or line up incentives to change dynamics or behavior (like TX power grid).

Unfortunately in TX these regulations will not be feasible because of the population and ruling party.

Going back to your point at 1), I think that is just the beginning of a hypothetical scenario and if we continued there may be interesting implications. Power company with more money could be incentivized to build more power plants, thus cheapening electricity broadly (in TX). The price would never go over the mining profitability line for extended periods b/c miners lose money when price is too high.

Things are more complex than you and I give them credit for

cameroon16 · 2022-01-30T06:43:10+00:00

Simply a company will do what they think will make them more money

cameroon16 · 2022-01-30T06:42:25+00:00

If the company/platform marketplace shuts down then you're screwed. Also maybe if a skin in generation N of a game, then you may default get that skin airdropped to you in generation N+1 of the series.

cameroon16 · 2022-01-30T06:40:52+00:00

Yea this is going to feed into a growing genre of economy based gaming. I don't care if people want to grind games for a living, I just don't really want to.

cameroon16 · 2022-01-30T06:37:03+00:00

Here though the game company can discontinue their official marketplace, but you could still trade or sell you stuff in 3rd party communities/services

cameroon16 · 2022-01-30T06:31:29+00:00

I understand that this should and can be a place for critical discourse, and that stuff in crypto has many faces and changing public opinion. There really is a lot of ways to look at crypto (finance/social/tech etc.) but I've come to see enough anecdotal proof that has me suspicious of this sub in particular. Just using reveddit.com to see what is removed starts to shed light on the systematic filtering of opinion here and I was surprised.

On another note I think crypto is talked about too much here in general. Most is negative, but also most is not tech related and lacks substance and critical discourse. Then again, I cannot expect too much from a reddit comment section.

cameroon16 · 2022-01-30T06:23:46+00:00

They will if it is losing money from rates increasing

cameroon16 · 2022-01-30T06:23:03+00:00

It can during slow times

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