{
  "version": "https://jsonfeed.org/version/1.1",
  "title": "chem-bla-ics",
  "description": "Chemblaics (pronounced chem-bla-ics) is the science that uses open science and computers to solve problems in chemistry, biochemistry and related fields.",
  "home_page_url": "https://chem-bla-ics.linkedchemistry.info/",
  "feed_url": "https://chem-bla-ics.linkedchemistry.info/2007/08/01/excel-messes-up-your-data-analysis.json",
  "icon": "https://chem-bla-ics.linkedchemistry.info/assets/images/chem-bla-ics_logo.png",
  "language": "en",
  "authors": [
    {
      "name": "Egon Willighagen",
      "url": "https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7542-0286",
      "_orcid": "0000-0001-7542-0286"
    }
  ],
  "items": [

    {
      "id": "https://doi.org/10.59350/81926-4bz44",
      "url": "https://chem-bla-ics.linkedchemistry.info/2007/08/01/excel-messes-up-your-data-analysis.html",
      "title": "Excel messes up your data analysis :)",
      "content_html": "<p>Well, no wonder: Excel is meant to be used to process money flows. Anyway, <a href=\"http://del.icio.us/greyarea\">greyarea</a> pointed me to\n<a href=\"http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002912.html\">this nice blog item</a> from March 2006. It discusses a 2004 article in\n<a href=\"http://www.biomedcentral.com/bmcbioinformatics\">BMC Bioinformatics</a> <em>Mistaken Identifiers: Gene name errors can be introduced\ninadvertently when using Excel in bioinformatics</em> by Barry Zeeberg et al. (DOI:<a href=\"https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2105-5-80\">10.1186/1471-2105-5-80</a>).\nHence, the importance of semantics and proper markup languages. The quotes are illustrative:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n  <p>When we were beta-testing [two new bioinformatics programs] on microarray data, a frustrating problem occurred repeatedly: Some\ngene names kept bouncing back as “unknown.” A little detective work revealed the reason: … A default date conversion feature in\nExcel … was altering gene names that it considered to look like dates. For example, the tumor suppressor DEC1 [Deleted in\nEsophageal Cancer 1] was being converted to ‘1-DEC.’ Figure 1 lists 30 gene names that suffer an analogous fate.<br /><br /></p>\n\n  <p>…<br /><br /></p>\n\n  <p>There is another default conversion problem for RIKEN clone identifiers identifiers of the form nnnnnnnEnn, where n denotes a\ndigit. These identifiers are comprised of the serial number of the plate that contains the library, information on plate status,\nand the address of the clone. A search … identified more than 2,000 such identifiers out of a total set of 60,770. For example,\nthe RIKEN identifier “2310009E13” was converted irreversibly to the floating-point number “2.31E+13.” A non-expert user might\nwell fail to notice that approximately 3% of the identifiers on a microarray with tens of thousands of genes had been converted\nto an incorrect form, yet the potential for 2,000 identifiers to be transmogrified without notice is a considerable concern. Most\nimportant, these conversions to an internal date representation or floating-point number format are irreversible; the original\ngene name cannot be recovered.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Is this the article that made all bioinformaticians turn to R?</p>\n\n<h4>References</h4>\n<div class=\"csl-bib-body\">\n    <div class=\"csl-entry\">Zeeberg, B. R., Riss, J., Kane, D. W., Bussey, K. J., Uchio, E., Linehan, W. M., Barrett, J. C., &#38; Weinstein, J. N. (2004). Mistaken Identifiers: Gene name errors can be introduced inadvertently when using Excel in bioinformatics. <i>BMC Bioinformatics</i>, <i>5</i>(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2105-5-80 <a href=\"https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2105-5-80\">CrossRef</a> <a href=\"https://qlever.scholia.wiki/doi/10.1186/1471-2105-5-80\">Scholia</a></div>\n  </div>",
      "summary": "Well, no wonder: Excel is meant to be used to process money flows. Anyway, greyarea pointed me to this nice blog item from March 2006. It discusses a 2004 article in BMC Bioinformatics Mistaken Identifiers: Gene name errors can be introduced inadvertently when using Excel in bioinformatics by Barry Zeeberg et al. (DOI:10.1186/1471-2105-5-80). Hence, the importance of semantics and proper markup languages. The quotes are illustrative:",
      
      "date_published": "2007-08-01T00:00:00+00:00",
      "date_modified": "2025-02-22T00:00:00+00:00",
      "tags": ["bioinfo","excel"],
      "_references": [
        
          
          
            { "url": "https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2105-5-80", "doi": "10.1186/1471-2105-5-80"
             }
            
          
        ],
      
      
      
      
      
      
        "authors": [ { "name": "Egon Willighagen", "url": "https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7542-0286" } ]
      
    }

  ]
}