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Missing Covid-19 test data was caused by the ill-thought-out use of Excel

bbc.com

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Re: Missing Covid-19 test data was caused by the ill-thought-out use of Excel

#241

Post by iainmerrick »

daanlo wrote: post #16

We did a bit of work for laboratories this year and csv is not an uncommon exchange format between labs. In general almost all exchange formats are text based, with labs saying they will upgrade to „modern xml formats“ at some point in the future. So seen in this context a csv or an excel file doesn‘t really surprise me and should probably also be seen in this context.

As the article notes, the CSV part of the pipeline was fine; it only broke after they imported the data to XLS.

One lesson I’d draw from that is to favor simple human-readable text formats like CSV, where they’re suitable for the job at hand.

Re: Missing Covid-19 test data was caused by the ill-thought-out use of Excel

#242

Post by rvba »

hinkley wrote: post #207

I hate solving problems and not knowing how I did it, so this particular experience has stuck in my craw. Trying to develop a budget to pay off debts, my partner made this elaborate Excel spreadsheet and the output was that basically she had no spending money and I had very little, until one or both of us got a raise. It was far more austere than either of us were willing to go. So I started over using a different eq…

Your post is so stupid that someone could make a copy-pasta of it, e.g. "I tried to write a program in C++ but it didn't want to compile, so I spent 90 minutes poking at the code, looking for the error and never did find it. I don't know what the right solution is to this sort of problem, at least for developers.

-------------------

"I don't know how to use Excel (most popular spreadsheet program used for budgeting), thus my conclusion is that Excel is stupid, its users are stupid, while programmers are smart. Next time I will have to make a budget, instead of using Excel, I will create my own program that does the same, but better!"

"And since I will be building this from scratch, I will start with designing the universe"

-------------------

And trying to be constructive: you probably mixed your calculations with data. You could calculate things separately and then just put it into one sheet: revenues with +sign and costs with -sign.

Re: Missing Covid-19 test data was caused by the ill-thought-out use of Excel

#243

Post by joosters »

hinkley wrote: post #207

I hate solving problems and not knowing how I did it, so this particular experience has stuck in my craw. Trying to develop a budget to pay off debts, my partner made this elaborate Excel spreadsheet and the output was that basically she had no spending money and I had very little, until one or both of us got a raise. It was far more austere than either of us were willing to go. So I started over using a different eq…

You made two different spreadsheets, they came up with different results, and you're blaming Microsoft for the error? Really?

Excel, whether you like it or loathe it, is in such wide use around the world that $300 math errors would have been noticed a very long time ago. I could believe that there are still many lurking bugs with obscure corner cases, nasty floating point rounding minutiae and so on, but I would bet (checks spreadsheet) $300 that your mismatched results were solely due to your own failures.

Re: Missing Covid-19 test data was caused by the ill-thought-out use of Excel

#244

Post by patrickthebold »

hinkley wrote: post #207

I hate solving problems and not knowing how I did it, so this particular experience has stuck in my craw. Trying to develop a budget to pay off debts, my partner made this elaborate Excel spreadsheet and the output was that basically she had no spending money and I had very little, until one or both of us got a raise. It was far more austere than either of us were willing to go. So I started over using a different eq…

Make a third spreadsheet from scratch and see if it agrees with either of the existing ones.

There's some saying about never going to sea with two spreadsheets.

Re: Missing Covid-19 test data was caused by the ill-thought-out use of Excel

#245

Post by SomaticPirate »

rvba wrote: post #242
hinkley wrote: post #207

I hate solving problems and not knowing how I did it, so this particular experience has stuck in my craw. Trying to develop a budget to pay off debts, my partner made this elaborate Excel spreadsheet and the output was that basically she had no spending money and I had very little, until one or both of us got a raise. It was far more austere than either of us were willing to go. So I started over using a different eq…

Your post is so stupid that someone could make a copy-pasta of it, e.g. "I tried to write a program in C++ but it didn't want to compile, so I spent 90 minutes poking at the code, looking for the error and never did find it. I don't know what the right solution is to this sort of problem, at least for developers. ------------------- "I don't know how to use Excel (most popular spreadsheet program used for budgeting),…

Umm, who is qualified to use Excel if both scientists and economists frequently have errors in their published works? https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2016/09/07/excel-er...

Re: Missing Covid-19 test data was caused by the ill-thought-out use of Excel

#246

Post by hinkley »

1123581321 wrote: post #216
hinkley wrote: post #207

I hate solving problems and not knowing how I did it, so this particular experience has stuck in my craw. Trying to develop a budget to pay off debts, my partner made this elaborate Excel spreadsheet and the output was that basically she had no spending money and I had very little, until one or both of us got a raise. It was far more austere than either of us were willing to go. So I started over using a different eq…

That rework based on suspicion is typically how it’s done. :) Add to that subject matter expert review. For example, I used to work on a sheet of scoop size calculations for industrial digging and nothing from it would reach sales staff or customers until a couple of the crusty old experts played with it and vouched for the calculations. Imperfect measures, but they keep the work within the grasp of everyday/business…

I didn't rework it because I thought the numbers were bad. She and I agreed to ground rules, [but] I could not commit to the consequences even though the 1st order consequences came out in my favor. The second-order consequences would be that I'd tricked her, intentionally or otherwise, which is decidedly unhealthy in a partnership. I had contributed 2/3rds of the income but 2/5ths of the debts (the latter being the main sticking point) so while 'fair' was not going to be 50:50, I'm not some monster who's going to buy high end electronics while my partner is eating ramen.

I expected worse news for myself after re-doing the numbers, and in fact I ended up with a little bit more spending money with the new numbers.

I mention this only because I have come to expect policy people to stick to their initial narrative a little more enthusiastically than I could. Getting them to review data and policy unless there is a clear benefit for themselves is difficult. It's very common for people to get promoted by challenging this friction in ways that benefit everyone (because the deciders couldn't connect the dots). It's always newsworthy, and I wish it weren't.

Re: Missing Covid-19 test data was caused by the ill-thought-out use of Excel

#247

Post by lordnacho »

The problem is that anyone who isn't a decent coder think excel is a sensible choice for this, because they've seen it in their school or work.

So when the proposals come in, you're going to see one guy who says it's all common sense and we use familiar old excel for everything, and another lunatic who says something called "pigsqueal" is actually the standard, connected to a "frontend" which for some reason is now separate to the "backend". This nutter thinks we have time to write some unit tests and also wants to add an authentication module so we know who uploaded what. And somehow he thinks we need to add logging so we can ensure errors can be tracked and debugged. Amazingly he seems to be suggesting that there's going to be errors in our process.

Re: Missing Covid-19 test data was caused by the ill-thought-out use of Excel

#248

Post by akho »

sails wrote: post #132
pintxo wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you every worked in a large enterprise? I have personally tested an Excel based credit rating tool, to be rolled-out globally by a major financial institution. The fact that one should not do this, is by no means a reason not to do it.

Would be interested in hearing more about that Excel tool.

Come work at a bank. Any bank.

Re: Missing Covid-19 test data was caused by the ill-thought-out use of Excel

#249

Post by dllthomas »

joosters wrote: post #243
hinkley wrote: post #207

I hate solving problems and not knowing how I did it, so this particular experience has stuck in my craw. Trying to develop a budget to pay off debts, my partner made this elaborate Excel spreadsheet and the output was that basically she had no spending money and I had very little, until one or both of us got a raise. It was far more austere than either of us were willing to go. So I started over using a different eq…

You made two different spreadsheets, they came up with different results, and you're blaming Microsoft for the error? Really? Excel, whether you like it or loathe it, is in such wide use around the world that $300 math errors would have been noticed a very long time ago. I could believe that there are still many lurking bugs with obscure corner cases, nasty floating point rounding minutiae and so on, but I would bet…

I've re-read the parent comment a few times, and I really don't see how this is your takeaway. The author is complaining that they find Excel difficult to inspect and different spreadsheets difficult to compare. There's no claim that Excel did a calculation wrong.

Re: Missing Covid-19 test data was caused by the ill-thought-out use of Excel

#250

Post by pestaa »

joosters wrote: post #243
hinkley wrote: post #207

I hate solving problems and not knowing how I did it, so this particular experience has stuck in my craw. Trying to develop a budget to pay off debts, my partner made this elaborate Excel spreadsheet and the output was that basically she had no spending money and I had very little, until one or both of us got a raise. It was far more austere than either of us were willing to go. So I started over using a different eq…

You made two different spreadsheets, they came up with different results, and you're blaming Microsoft for the error? Really? Excel, whether you like it or loathe it, is in such wide use around the world that $300 math errors would have been noticed a very long time ago. I could believe that there are still many lurking bugs with obscure corner cases, nasty floating point rounding minutiae and so on, but I would bet…

I'm not so sure he claimed that Excel can't add and subtract numbers. I think the argument is that even two people can make such a mess of a spreadsheet that nobody can really untangle it later.
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