On May 10, 2013 8:33 PM, "John Oliver" <<a href="mailto:jp.oliver@ntlworld.com">jp.oliver@ntlworld.com</a>> wrote: > > John Oliver > > PS: I do rather like excel as a program even if some functions are hidden away in that tabular view. If on Windows and it was installed alongside LibreOffice I would likely choose Excel. I use LibreOffice at home. > > PPS: I'm also playing devil's advocate a little here, to see what the community response is. > Just a note to say that as far as spreadsheets go the last literature I checked (as in statistcal exactness and what not) gnumeric was the best one followed by excel then calc and lastly google docs. Which the authours clearly recomended nit to be used for any serious caculation. Makes sense since gnumeric works with R project. What I do not understand why doesn't calc do it as well. I can dig out references but basically look in scolarity papers for excel an gnumeric. While you are at it matlab and octave. > On 10 May 2013, at 08:53, Avi Greenbury <<a href="mailto:lists@avi.co">lists@avi.co</a>> wrote: > > > John Oliver wrote: > >> If you're in education trying to teach children to word process it simply > >> isn't faesable to try to explain the difference between proprietary > >> and open-source software etc and then to get them to make a choice. > > > > I think the notion of software freedom is absolutely the sort of thing > > that people claiming to be teaching IT to kids should be teaching to > > them. > > > > I don't think the person teaching them how to use a word processor > > should be doing that, but I don't think that should be the IT teacher, > > either. > > > >> Such a thing would be a massive logistical operation too - > >> demonstrations on a projector screen would be wrong for everyone who > >> chose the other system, and would have to be done again. > > > > It depends how you teach it. If you teach concepts then you're likely > > to find that kids will work out how to use both. If you teach the > > co-ordinates that need to be clicked on in order to carry out a > > specific task then obviously they'll only be able to use that one > > suite, but you're also doing it wrong. > > > > -- > > Avi > > > > -- > > <a href="mailto:ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com">ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com</a> > > <a href="https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk">https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk</a> > > <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/">https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/</a> > > -- > <a href="mailto:ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com">ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com</a> > <a href="https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk">https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk</a> > <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/">https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/</a>