We used to find ourselves at an impasse with applications such as Microsoft Excel, where we needed it to do something specific, but there was no built-in function for it.  Or we would want Excel to do something repetitively, but we didn't want to have to manually perform the task ourselves because our time is worth more than that.  In other instances, we would find ourselves reading about a statistical method or a numerical modeling technique that we would like to try, but it was not integrated into any of our statistical programs.

To deal with these frustrations, we have learned a range of programming languages and methods.  One of the most valuable has been VBA—Visual Basic for Applications—the macro language that all of the Microsoft Office products use.  We use it almost exclusively within Excel to program custom functions to enable Excel to perform statistical calculations that it is not otherwise capable of doing.  We can also get Excel to calculate some basic models, but it is very slow when it comes to extensive number crunching.

Additionally, we can write applications (either as a stand-alone executable or as a dynamic link library) in C or Java or Visual Basic to handle some basic file system tasks or numerical needs.  One such application was written to enable the staff at the University of Missouri Research Reactor Archaeometry Lab to merge or divide or otherwise manage files that were being produced by a statistical program they had developed.  We also made modifications to their statistical programs to include some new functionality.  We have also written programs to perform complex modeling calculations for GIS and other applications.

 If you have some tasks that you do manually in Excel, they can probably be automated to some extent, and we would be happy to consult with you about it.  Or if you have need for a specific application, but don't know if it is feasible or not, we could talk it over with you and might be able to solve your problem.