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Thought this was interesting. Across 160 teams of researchers, just about all failed to make good life outcome predictions on things like GPA, evictions, layoffs, and others. Data followed 4.5k families across 15 years, with 13k features (varied over time). Haven't looked at it directly yet, but will be turning the docs and data inside out... In the meantime, authors claim this as showing the limits of ML. Oh, and it's published in PNAS, so you know there's some big publication energy there.
https://www.pnas.org/content/117/15/8398
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Use R or Python!
And use AI to generate the code for you - - ChatGPT and Github Copilot. It will have bugs but be better than you starting out. Get a proof of concept fast
Power query
Use a coding language. Build a template .py or .R file.
Python
If you’re stuck using excel for any particular reason, even upgrading to basic VBA would help.
If that’s the case I’m guessing you likely have significant efficiencies that could be gained by writing better code.
For example, are you:
-Avoiding using cell formulas via code
-Turning off screen calculations
-Ensuring automatic calculations are off
-Disabling events, animations, page breaks
-Turning on option explicit
-Using “for each” in place of indexed “for”
-Optimizing large memory tasks (e.g., bypassing the clipboard for copy paste, leveraging arrays)
-Minimizing the use of “select”
-Leveraging “with” when performing multiple actions on the same range
Some of these, particularly the first couple, can immediately cut your processing time by half or more.