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Comment Re:Excel? (Score 1) 83

HDF5 looks amazing. I was unfamiliar. Thank you.

I think the short answer to "why?" is educational hegemony.

MS Office is often available on academic computers, and when a biology undergrad, it was what I and the rest of my cohort were expected to use. Granted, that was a moment ago, but I can’t imagine the prevalence of Excel in education having changed all that much. What would schools replace it with? LibreOffice? No, I can’t imagine that, either.

I get that CSV is an option in Excel, but it is not what Excel makes easiest to use by default. Being an expert in biology does not make one an expert in how to use software or choices in what software to use.

Comment Re:Apples and Oranges (Score 1) 272

Parents are also a handicap if they feel that their child put in the effort to make the grade, and that they deserve appropriate marks for the effort.

I'm of the opinion that schools need to maximize the number of C students, not A students. If you push the bell curve of scores toward the middle, then you are challenging the majority of the students, and not neglecting the people who should be at the high end of the curve. People need to stop thinking of them as an statements of worth, and start thinking of them as an evaluation of challenge. Winning all the time does not lead to success. Even video game designers know that.

(I would probably be somewhere in middle of that curve, honestly)

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