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Excel's major problem is the ease in which point/click/copy/paste generates errors. There have been several recent cases where off-by-one cell errors have cause
by johnminter 13y ago
Excel's major problem is the ease in which point/click/copy/paste generates errors. There have been several recent cases where off-by-one cell errors have caused authors issues. This was one part of the Duke scandal (the fraud was much worse, but the Excel was sloppy) and put egg on some Harvard Econ prof's faces - to the delight of the UMASS grad student that found it...
- flogic 13y agoThat sloppiness is also it's core strength. It allows people without training to slice and dice data. The process is almost never pretty but they're "free" to compute.
- tod222 13y ago> This was one part of the Duke scandal (the fraud was much worse, but the Excel was sloppy)… Apparently a reference to Former Duke Cancer Researcher Anil Potti. [1][2] > …put egg on some Harvard Econ prof's faces - to the delight of the UMASS grad student that found it... Likely referring to the Reinhart/Rogoff spreadsheet error discovered by Thomas Herndon. [3] [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anil_Potti http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anil_Potti [2] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/13/anil-potti-duke-cancer-fraud-university-research_n_1273264.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/13/anil-potti-duke-can... [3] http://chronicle.com/article/UMass-Graduate-Student-Talks/138763/ http://chronicle.com/article/UMass-Graduate-Student-Talks/13...