At 12:38 27/03/2015 +0200, Pertti Rönnberg wrote:
A spreadsheet program that cannot be fully trusted is totally worthless!!
It's perhaps worth a reminder that, in the sense
that you mean it, spreadsheets can never be
"trusted". Since much of their essential
functionality is hidden (formulae, formatting,
significant options) and they are untestable, you
should never rely on the results of a
spreadsheet. Your judgement, then (but not mine)
is that spreadsheet programs generally are "totally worthless".
See, for example:
http://lemire.me/blog/archives/2014/05/23/you-shouldnt-use-a-spreadsheet-for-important-work-i-mean-it/
"I will happily use a spreadsheet to estimate the
grades of my students, my retirement savings, or
how much tax I paid last year
but I will not use
Microsoft Excel to run a bank or to compute the
trajectory of the space shuttle. Spreadsheets are convenient but error prone."
http://baselinescenario.com/2013/02/09/the-importance-of-excel/
"But while Excel the program is reasonably
robust, the spreadsheets that people create with Excel are incredibly fragile."
http://mba.tuck.dartmouth.edu/spreadsheet/product_pubs_files/Literature.pdf
"Among those who study spreadsheet use, it is
widely accepted that errors are prevalent in
operational spreadsheets and that errors can lead
to poor decisions and cost millions of dollars."
"Panko summarized this literature by reporting
that 94% of spreadsheets have errors, with an average cell error rate of 5.2%."
Brian Barker
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