<p>In my experience, engineers, statisticians and programmers will not use spreadsheets, they will use programming in languages such as R, python or matlab instead. To me it makes sense to spend a few hours teaching the basics of a spreadsheet app in high school so that students will know that it exists and will feel confident to learn more advanced usage if they need to. But the emphasis should be on teaching programming, which is much more powerful and less likely to be self-taught.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2021-07-10T20:00:26.570Z
2021-07-10T20:00:26.570Z
citronrose
<p>As we know that MS excel plays an important part in the life of programmers, managers, scientists, engineers, statisticians, etc.
Shall we add a comprehensive course in excel for our high school students in CS?
It will definitely help them in a long run. Here are some of the sites which show the use of MS excel. There are a lot more uses.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.goskills.com/Excel/Resources/Uses-of-Excel-in-business" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.goskills.com/Excel/Resources/Uses-of-Excel-in-business</a></p>
<p><a href="https://i.sstatic.net/echTU.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.sstatic.net/echTU.png" alt="some statistics with Excel" /></a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.wallstreetmojo.com/uses-of-excel/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.wallstreetmojo.com/uses-of-excel/</a></p>
<p><a href="https://magoosh.com/excel/10-best-uses-microsoft-excel/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://magoosh.com/excel/10-best-uses-microsoft-excel/</a></p>
<p>and many more .........</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2021-06-19T19:55:56.827Z
Designing "data" use-cases should be primary problem here. It is easy to justify and explain Excel (or Google Docs) if student was confronted with data analyzing issues before. Best if data issues stemmed from personal (or course) projects. When I was in highschool we had Excel lessons, but they were totally uninteresting, so I had to rediscover it much later.
danbst
CC BY-SA 4.0
2021-06-20T08:12:41.060Z
In the UK, learning spread sheets is considered Digital Literacy not Computer Science. I would expect it to be tought in other subjects: e.g. science (collection of experimental data, analysis, and plotting), maths (exploring of mathematical functions, charts, statistics, etc).
ctrl-alt-delor
CC BY-SA 4.0
2021-06-20T08:14:32.903Z
Teaching a product "Excel" is marketing, teaching a tool "Spread-sheets" is Training.
ctrl-alt-delor
<secondary-education>
Adding MS excel in curriculum for highschool students
# Adding MS excel in curriculum for highschool students

(Asked by: username_0 on 2021-06-17)

As we know that MS excel plays an important part in the life of programmers, managers, scientists, engineers, statisticians, etc.
Shall we add a comprehensive course in excel for our high school students in CS?
It will definitely help them in a long run. Here are some of the sites which show the use of MS excel. There are a lot more uses.

<https://www.goskills.com/Excel/Resources/Uses-of-Excel-in-business>

[![some statistics with Excel](https://i.sstatic.net/echTU.png)](https://i.sstatic.net/echTU.png)

<https://www.wallstreetmojo.com/uses-of-excel/>

<https://magoosh.com/excel/10-best-uses-microsoft-excel/>

and many more .........

**Tags:** secondary-education

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: Designing "data" use-cases should be primary problem here. It is easy to justify and explain Excel (or Google Docs) if student was confronted with data analyzing issues before. Best if data issues stemmed from personal (or course) projects. When I was in highschool we had Excel lessons, but they were totally uninteresting, so I had to rediscover it much later.  
> **username_2**: In the UK, learning spread sheets is considered Digital Literacy not Computer Science. I would expect it to be tought in other subjects: e.g. science (collection of experimental data, analysis, and plotting), maths (exploring of mathematical functions, charts, statistics, etc).  
> **username_2**: Teaching a product "Excel" is marketing, teaching a tool "Spread-sheets" is Training.  

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## 1 answers

### Answer by username_3 on 2021-07-10. Score: 1

In my experience, engineers, statisticians and programmers will not use spreadsheets, they will use programming in languages such as R, python or matlab instead. To me it makes sense to spend a few hours teaching the basics of a spreadsheet app in high school so that students will know that it exists and will feel confident to learn more advanced usage if they need to. But the emphasis should be on teaching programming, which is much more powerful and less likely to be self-taught.


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