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Comment by wyck | Hacker News Reader

They are solving a problem that doesn't really exist, the challenge is not the last step of a data report, it's the steps involved in the beginning, getting good data in, formatting, joining multiple sources, automation, dealing with junk data, procedures,etc.

I don't understand the example, what's the difference between typing "Show me a line graph" and clicking a button in excel that does the same thing.

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Did you try it? Yes, getting good data is a challenge but that's not one they can solve in Sheets. Making a graph is also not always one button, unless you have very simple data.

I found it immediately useful. They've solved some UX and discovery issues around creating charts. And it's not _just_ charts... they're answering questions and identifying trends within the data. e.g. I threw some pretty basic data at this and it told me “Flights” contains a yearly cycle: “Flights” increases until May 1, decreases until October 1, and increases until December 1.

That's pretty handy. YMMV, but this is awesome.

Tableau did some research in this area, and found NLP queries were much faster:

https://pasteboard.co/dPeoSHM1s.png

To be honest no, I don't use sheets unless it's for something quick and dirty, it just doesn't compare to excel. In terms of machine learning I have tried IBM Watson with sets of data, interesting concept but I found myself still juggling the data to get what I wanted. I currently use Tableau.

THIS. As someone always dealing with data, I agree that getting to the point of a regression plot is where all the work is at.

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