Spreadsheet Fever Case Example
October 12, 2020
I have been using the phrase “spreadsheet fever” to describe the impact of fiddling with numbers in Microsoft Excel has on MBAs. With Excel providing the backbone for numerous statistical confections, the sugar hit of magic assumptions cannot be under-estimated. The mental structure of a crazed investment analyst brooks no interference from common sense.
“Excel: Why Using Microsoft’s Tool Caused Covid-19 Results to Be Lost” provides a possible case example of what happens when thumbtypers and over-confident innumerates tangle with a digital spreadsheet. No green eyeshades and no pencils needed. Calculators? One can hear a 22 year old ask, “What’s a calculator? I have one on my iPhone?”
The Beeb reports:
PHE [Public Health England, a fine UK entity] had set up an automatic process to pull this data together into Excel templates so that it could then be uploaded to a central system and made available to the NHS Test and Trace team, as well as other government computer dashboards.
And what tool did these over confident wizards use?
Microsoft Excel, the weapon of choice for business and STEM analysis, of course.
How did the experts wander off the information highway into a thicket of errors? The Beeb explains:
The problem is that PHE’s own developers picked an old file format to do this – known as XLS. As a consequence, each template could handle only about 65,000 rows of data rather than the one million-plus rows that Excel is actually capable of. And since each test result created several rows of data, in practice it meant that each template was limited to about 1,400 cases. When that total was reached, further cases were simply left off.
The fix? Can kicking perhaps:
But insiders acknowledge that the current clunky system needs to be replaced by something more advanced that excludes Excel, as soon as possible.
Righto.
Stephen E Arnold, October 12, 2020
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