Alternatives to Excel for tabular data? Minitab? Tableau?

[Howard]

Hi all,

In some other threads I've inquired questions related to the same theme. I chose to remain with Excel and have had some help from programmers to achieve what I want for now. But, I'm always having new ideas and stuff I'd like to explore and improve. So, it's costly and otherwise a disadvantage having to always go through a programmer.

Excel is also starting to get a bit slow and cumbersome to work with.

I'm curious if there exist any commercial alternatives to Excel for working with tabular data? Both sorting it, exploring, sorting, displaying it, etc.

I got a tip that MiniTab is worth checking out and having taken only a cursory look at this point it does look interesting. MiniTab themselves seem to claim that their product is superior over Excel:

http://www.minitab.com/en-us/academic/why-excel-doesnt/

Anyone ever used this?

PS: I realize that perhaps learning MATLAB, R, Python, i.e., programming would probably be the best, but I just don't see myself having the time to become proficient enough anytime soon in addition to everything else I need to do.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

Best.

Howard

 

[traider]

Py Xll will be the best. Excel integrated with Python.
Learn python , it's worth it and you can become proficient quite fast if y ou go for a good course

 

[userque]

Hi all,

In some other threads I've inquired questions related to the same theme. I chose to remain with Excel and have had some help from programmers to achieve what I want for now. But, I'm always having new ideas and stuff I'd like to explore and improve. So, it's costly and otherwise a disadvantage having to always go through a programmer.

Excel is also starting to get a bit slow and cumbersome to work with.

I'm curious if there exist any commercial alternatives to Excel for working with tabular data? Both sorting it, exploring, sorting, displaying it, etc.

I got a tip that MiniTab is worth checking out and having taken only a cursory look at this point it does look interesting. MiniTab themselves seem to claim that their product is superior over Excel:

http://www.minitab.com/en-us/academic/why-excel-doesnt/

Anyone ever used this?

PS: I realize that perhaps learning MATLAB, R, Python, i.e., programming would probably be the best, but I just don't see myself having the time to become proficient enough anytime soon in addition to everything else I need to do.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

Best.

Howard

RapidMiner and Knime have free versions.

The can create, view, and manipulate spreadsheet data. They can handle more data than Excel.

Additionally, they are powerful tools that can be programmed visually (via parameters rather than a computer language, if desired) and provide many machine learning capabilities if desired:

 

[DaveV]

Have you considered using a SQL database? If you have too much data for Excel to handle a SQL database could easily handle it. You would have to learn SQL, but it is much easier than learning a programming language.

And, if you eventually migrate to using a full programming language, they all support SQL databases.

 

[truetype]

perhaps learning MATLAB, R, Python, i.e., programming would probably be the best, but I just don't see myself having the time

You can learn all the R you need in two hours. After one day working with R, you'll wonder why you didn't try it years ago. And it's free.

 

[tommcginnis]

All these replies echo what you've already received.
The thing is, we don't really know what you're doing.

Nor do we know how your Excel is prioritized by your computer -- or *what* computer you're running. If you're flogging some old horse of a computer -- or have it set up with a big block of CPU and RAM reserved for some other software -- no change in stat platform will improve on that. (For example, installing a $60 SSD might make your spreadsheet blazingly fast, if it writes back-and-forth to your hard drive.)

That said, I am in the same boat as you, however. I scrape 71 SPX and ES strikes over 6 expiries into an OpenOffice spreadsheet, and do a bunch of analysis from there. The spreadsheets have topped 2.5MB, and lately have gotten slower in loading and recalcs. ((Since a lot of the spreadsheet is for general research, I have thought about trimming it into two spreadsheets -- a full-bore version, and a chopped-down "sport" version for trading.))

That said, I went with Open/LibreOffice, because
1) I hate Microbloat.
2) OO/LO is more stable in operations.
3) OO/LO carries a much smaller footprint, re CPU, RAM, and storage.
4) OO/LO is VERY flexible with regard to backwards compatibility.
5) OO/LO is flexible with regard to other spreadsheet formats.
(That said, there is not 100% correspondence between OO/LO functions and Excel functions, and your spreadsheet make (likely) require some work to operate 100% in OO/LO.)

Last thought: if you were to switch, go with LibreOffice at this point, as the best supported/updated.

 

[ryker]

All these replies echo what you've already received.
The thing is, we don't really know what you're doing.

Nor do we know how your Excel is prioritized by your computer -- or *what* computer you're running. If you're flogging some old horse of a computer -- or have it set up with a big block of CPU and RAM reserved for some other software -- no change in stat platform will improve on that. (For example, installing a $60 SSD might make your spreadsheet blazingly fast, if it writes back-and-forth to your hard drive.)

That said, I am in the same boat as you, however. I scrape 71 SPX and ES strikes over 6 expiries into an OpenOffice spreadsheet, and do a bunch of analysis from there. The spreadsheets have topped 2.5MB, and lately have gotten slower in loading and recalcs. ((Since a lot of the spreadsheet is for general research, I have thought about trimming it into two spreadsheets -- a full-bore version, and a chopped-down "sport" version for trading.))

That said, I went with Open/LibreOffice, because
1) I hate Microbloat.
2) OO/LO is more stable in operations.
3) OO/LO carries a much smaller footprint, re CPU, RAM, and storage.
4) OO/LO is VERY flexible with regard to backwards compatibility.
5) OO/LO is flexible with regard to other spreadsheet formats.
(That said, there is not 100% correspondence between OO/LO functions and Excel functions, and your spreadsheet make (likely) require some work to operate 100% in OO/LO.)

Last thought: if you were to switch, go with LibreOffice at this point, as the best supported/updated.

Do you know if RTD is supported by OpenOffice. At the moment I use Excel with Python (xlwings) for my trading and rely on RTD to get realtime prices (only used for PnL).

 

[Howard]

Py Xll will be the best. Excel integrated with Python.
Learn python , it's worth it and you can become proficient quite fast if y ou go for a good course

Thanks.

What's your definition of quite fast? Any course recommendations?

Thanks.

 

[Howard]

RapidMiner and Knime have free versions.

The can create, view, and manipulate spreadsheet data. They can handle more data than Excel.

Additionally, they are powerful tools that can be programmed visually (via parameters rather than a computer language, if desired) and provide many machine learning capabilities if desired.

Very interesting. I will do some Googling on these and see what I can discover on my own. If you're inclined to do so, please share some of your own experience (if you have used them yourself).

How is the data stored? Can I load data from my Excel sheets?

 

[Howard]

Have you considered using a SQL database? If you have too much data for Excel to handle a SQL database could easily handle it. You would have to learn SQL, but it is much easier than learning a programming language.

And, if you eventually migrate to using a full programming language, they all support SQL databases.

Actually, my data IS stored in SQL and I utilize an SQL database already. But I don't really have a clue as to exactly how it works. But basically, my calculations are done in C# and stored in a DB.

Excel is basically just used as a front-end to display the data and filter/sort it.

The calculations outside Excel are fairly fast. It's loading, refreshing and navigating in Excel which is slow. I have a hunch that it could have been set up better by those who programmed it.

Regardless, I still have the same predicament which is that I'm basically dependent on outside help whenever I get a new idea that I want implemented within this framework. I would love to be completely independent.

I'm an engineer by trade and no fool, so I can look at code and have a basic understanding of some of it, but I currently feel it's a long stretch from there and to proficiently work in code myself.