Don only sissies use spreadsheets?
Some scientists really hate spreadsheets. But the truth is that they are a GREAT way to teach students how to think through ecological or analytical problems. I have taught many courses in the past few years and started with “canned” educational programs, where students press buttons, run a simulation, and generate results. I switched to spreadsheets when I realized that very few students could tell me how the results were generated or what they mean. I’ve seen students be converted from math-phobics to hard-core modelers when they are engaged in entering equations and developing their own models.
