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I am thinking it can help people that don't have a background in computer science but are tasked to analyze data (for example, a marketing manager for a company). Spreadsheet have a lower entry point (and a lower ceiling) than a regular statistical analysis suite.

Also, using a spreadsheet has a visual component that you lose with R/python that can be off-putting if you are not comfortable with visualizing what certain lines of coding do.

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That makes sense. But then I guess my question becomes: at what point are you spending so much time and effort learning advanced features of spreadsheets that you could have become proficient in one of the tools with a higher ceiling?

In many offices most employees have little to no access to programming tools, with good reason (from an IT Support point of view). However, many of these same people will have Excel, and it does what many of those users need it to do. In many companies (outside the IT department), in order for a new tool to gain traction you'd have to find a use-case that made it compelling for the average office worker that wasn't already being met by the existing tools they know how to use, both to encourage people to learn how to use it, and to encourage IT Support to roll it out.

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