It turns out necessity really can be the mother of invention. Just ask Dan Bricklin — who co-created VisiCalc, the first computer spreadsheet. Prior to VisiCalc, personal computers were basically ...

In recent years, the Federal Circuit has issued a number of decisions attempting to define the line between computer-implemented claims that are patent ineligible under 35 U.S.C. § 101 for being ...

In 2010, a pair of researchers published a controversial economics paper. It was cited by UK politicians to justify austerity measures that sparked economic and employment crises, and anti-austerity ...

Computer science researchers have turned to unlikely sources - including Enron - for assembling huge collections of spreadsheets that can be used to study how people use this software. The goal is for ...

D.Delaware Judge Stark dismissed DET’s case on the pleadings — holding that the Borland/DET spreadsheet-tab patent claims were directed to abstract ideas. On appeal, the Federal Circuit has partially ...

Spreadsheets are super powerful, but they have limits. This article examines four big challenges of working in spreadsheets, and shows how data science tools such as notebooks can cleverly address ...

One of the most distracting actions in a terminal-heavy workflow is opening a spreadsheet in Excel, Google Sheets, or LibreOffice. Even if you only need a quick peek, it breaks focus. I have been ...

Computer spreadsheet programs have been around since 1979, when Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston created VisiCalc. The breakthrough program turned the Apple II into an electronic ledger, allowing users ...

Spreadsheet blunders aren’t just frustrating personal inconveniences. They can have serious consequences. And in the last few years alone, there have been a myriad of spreadsheet horror stories. In ...

Kathleen Clarke is a Ph.D. candidate in Higher Education at the University of Toronto. You can follow her on Twitter @_KathleenClarke where she tweets about graduate education, mental health, and ...