Nice paper. Have seen a slight movement in this over the years. Notably in the pharma industry there is the CDISC guidelines which structures data in a normalised way, paramter/response type setup. Most databases also do it this. Unfortunately the prevalence of the Excel virus (much like the other MS wares like IE) in all walks of computing means that way of thinking is inbuilt at a young age from schools and universities through into mainstream activities. Take almost any major incident and likely there will be an Excel file somewhere in the background as the root of it all, sitting there all unvalidated, mashed together with pretty colors perfect for some suited management type to pivot.
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