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Excel is pervasive. If you consider every single spreadsheet used for financial analysis and then used to allocate resources has material bugs in it, you'll be
by harry8 10y ago
Excel is pervasive. If you consider every single spreadsheet used for financial analysis and then used to allocate resources has material bugs in it, you'll be so close to the truth as makes no difference.
Has it crippled society?
- dr_zoidberg 10y agoHmmmm... I remember about an Excel macro-virus that would multiply numbers (and adjust the format to hide it) in data cells by small random number, between 0.99 and 1.01 slowly over time. By the time you realized what was going on, your data was completely gone. Can't remember the name though.
- ethbro 10y agoI think material but well known bugs are probably less dangerous because they're deterministic. The true insidiousness of a random mutagen exploit is the fact that you can't pin in down. Hell, you could even specifically code it to be resistant to reproduction attempts. ;)
- harry8 10y agono no no. Not the many formula implementation bugs. I mean every survey of financial models done in excel has material error in their conclusions. Regardless of known bugs in excel that microsoft won't fix. I mean that merger you just read about where the financial model was done with excel - it has material bugs in it. Material by the GAAP accounting & attest definition. > +/-5% of profit. +/- 10% of total assets. It's quite something...