[dovvdkc]

My biggest gripe with excel is that it doesn’t support complex numbers. Otherwise it’s bloody brilliant.

Life in science would be so much easier if it did

(I work on the simulation end of electrochemistry. All the data I receive is in excel sheets)

[pedrocr]

>My biggest gripe with excel is that it doesn’t support complex numbers.

complex()/imsum()/etc are not what you need?

[dovvdkc]

I didn’t know that existed, but no it’s not good enough. Try referring to the complex value in a cell in another cell. You get a value error.

I.e say A1 = complex(1,1) Then A2 = A1*2 -> error.

Things like imsum() are not enough and awkward. (We have calculators for simple complex math.)

Experimentalists use excel as a visual vector computer language. I’ve used it like that as well, and honestly, for many problems in science, the spreadsheet’s paradigm of interacting with the user is better.

So what you end up with is hacked complex support by using two columns to represent real() and imag(). Then your’s truly has to parse it to use in my models.

You can do cute things in excel though. My advisor had me program the electric field resulting from a (large) distribution of dipoles.

He wanted it done - he insisted it be done - in excel. Don’t ask.

I work in a govt lab, and if you’re dealing with exp. you’re dealing with excel.

What I wished excel had, therefore, was the ability for the cell itself to be a complex number (or, better, a list of lists [0]).

[0] what is it they say and complex systems and LISP? :P

[pedrocr]

I didn't know these either and they seem like bolted on instead of properly integrated. Excel should overload the same operators to be able to write =A1A2 for example. But that being said it seems clumsy but workable. It does have a full set of math functions. For your example you can just do =improduct(A1,2) and it works. And that's just a slightly less convenient way of writing =A12. Certainly much better than having two cells per number?