[goosedragons]

It's a lot harder to check your work in a spreadsheet vs. some sort of scripting language like R/Python etc. By default what you did is hidden, and it's easy to grab the wrong row/column and not notice.

For a while Excel was messing up basic statistics functions too. Wouldn't be surprised if there was something else not quite right in there.

[conductr]

I’d say having a test suite available is the bigger advantage of something like python. Most of the big mistakes people make in Excel are logic mistakes and they could happen anywhere. It’s just plain old human error. But if you can run a test and it fails, then at least you know to go looking for the bug.

Either way you’re likely trusting that the underlying code is error free. But most people aren’t checking their python imports. They may or may not be aware of the problems floats can introduce. So on.

[WastingMyTime89]

Excel forces you to break down and structure your tables in a meaningful way. I find it much easier to spot errors in than a script personally.

I think how confident you feel with excel will depend of what you do with it and how you were taught to use it. Years of consulting basically drilled into me that all my tables should be built as if they were going to be delivered to a client who will need to understand them at some point. If you lack structure however, it quickly devolves into chaos.