The Tyranny of Spreadsheets
timharford.com
The Tyranny of Spreadsheets
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Re: The Tyranny of Spreadsheets
#2This is a great read - I love the Italian accountancy history lesson at the start.
Re: The Tyranny of Spreadsheets
#3This is a great read - I love the Italian accountancy history lesson at the start.
Anything from Tim Harford is going to be good. His "More or Less" Radio 4 series is a must listen podcast.
Re: The Tyranny of Spreadsheets
#4Spreadsheets are a hammer so if that's all you know then all problems look like the nail. Really, many power users of Excel ought to be looking at more capable, testable and readable solutions from professional data analysts and scientists. Python would be a good start, but there are many options better than Excel for critical systems.
Re: The Tyranny of Spreadsheets
#5This was adapted from Tim Harharford's podcast
Cautionary Tales eps Wrong Tools Cost Lives
https://timharford.com/2021/05/cautionary-tales-wrong-tools-...
If you have not listened to the series I highly recommend it. His episode "LaLa Land: Galileo’s Warning" is by far one of my favorite pieces of media. In brief it is why redundant tightly coupled fail safes will often lead to cascading failures.
https://timharford.com/2019/11/cautionary-tales-ep-3-lala-la...
Re: The Tyranny of Spreadsheets
#6Data caught in spreadsheets is kind of an instance of the general siloing of data.
The situation is something of a general problem of a data-driven Society. One group of people want information available with one interface and spends resources only in putting it in a format suitable - to the detriment of others who/want need it. With spreadsheets in particular, naturally you have a data-integrity but that's still an instance of the broader problem.
Re: The Tyranny of Spreadsheets
#7O, the tyranny of web page animations...
Re: The Tyranny of Spreadsheets
#8This was adapted from Tim Harharford's podcast Cautionary Tales eps Wrong Tools Cost Lives https://timharford.com/2021/05/cautionary-tales-wrong-tools-... If you have not listened to the series I highly recommend it. His episode "LaLa Land: Galileo’s Warning" is by far one of my favorite pieces of media. In brief it is why redundant tightly coupled fail safes will often lead to cascading failures. https://timharford.…
Oh man, it reads exactly like his podcast 50 things that made the modern economy. I was having flashbacks but couldn’t pinpoint why. Thanks for sharing.
Re: The Tyranny of Spreadsheets
#9what if i told you spreadsheets are matrices
Re: The Tyranny of Spreadsheets
#10Disclaimer: I am building a spreadsheet alternative for javascript hackers based on Observable https://www.jigdev.com
For those interested it’s all in the disclaimer ;-)