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Is Excel the most dangerous software in the world?
anandcoral:
And add 'Copy-Paste' to it and you have a nuclear bomb under you table ticking till Boss finds out.
After that BOOM !
IainB:
Is Excel the most dangerous software in the world?
Well, whilst calling it the most dangerous software might be stretching it a bit, it could certainly be argued from a historical perspective that they had the potential to be "dangerous" and sometimes had actually proven to be so in fact.
My experience has been that Excel and Access have generally been the de facto financial black holes for a great deal of labour costs, where often non-IT personnel had spent many hours inventively developing one-off or prototype spreadsheet models and access database applications as business solutions to do often quite clever and useful things that simply could not have been done (at the time) in a timely or cost-effective manner using IT otherwise. Often these one-off solutions were tweaked to the stage where they could become so useful that they were commercially indispensable, and might even form a large part of the core legacy solutions for an enterprise.
A great strength of Excel and Access lies in their "tweakability" by the user - the extent of user control. That is also their Achilles Heel - there is a profound scope for human error in developing the logic and formulae in the models/applications, and that is why, from the perspective of stochastic and accounting accuracy, the models need to be independently audited and verified, but certainty in that regard (that all errors have been identified and fixed) is something that was and remains notoriously extremely difficult to achieve - despite the growth of things like spreadsheet auditing tools.
However, having worked on complex models such as ITEM (the UK Independent Treasury Econometric Model) and climate models of the North Sea, I would recommend skepticism towards any plea of incompetence - the "Oh dear, there was an error in the [insert name of scam] financial model" argument. These people aren't necessarily the fools they might have us believe.
For example, in "JPMorgan’s model had not captured this at all...".
Yeah, right.
Stoic Joker:
I'm reminded of that old truism about a poor tradesman always blaming his tools >:(
-Target (November 11, 2015, 06:44 PM)
--- End quote ---
+5 - Me too! :Thmbsup:
kunkel321:
Some good replies here. It is indeed possible that JPMorgan's top people were blaming Excel for their own poor choices. Even if the goof did happen in the way they say, it is still the fault of the tradesman, and not the tool (to use Target's words). Also, I had always assumed that there were many corporations that had a hand in this. This is the first time I've read about a particular company being the "straw that broke the camel's back."
Anyway, I will also attest to how difficult auditing an old spreadsheet can be. I don't use Excel for finances, but for timelines and due dates on projects mostly. I'll make these incredibly complex setups. Usually they will continue working indefinitely--Excel is quite robust. Later though, when I want to add a feature to my setup, I have to figure out how I designed darn the thing. Usually I, essentially, end up going over the entire process of building it again.. . :D
Here's the above-quoted book, btw: https://it-ebooks.info/book/6446/
superboyac:
Is Excel the most dangerous software in the world?
Well, whilst calling it the most dangerous software might be stretching it a bit, it could certainly be argued from a historical perspective that they had the potential to be "dangerous" and sometimes had actually proven to be so in fact.
My experience has been that Excel and Access have generally been the de facto financial black holes for a great deal of labour costs, where often non-IT personnel had spent many hours inventively developing one-off or prototype spreadsheet models and access database applications as business solutions to do often quite clever and useful things that simply could not have been done (at the time) in a timely or cost-effective manner using IT otherwise. Often these one-off solutions were tweaked to the stage where they could become so useful that they were commercially indispensable, and might even form a large part of the core legacy solutions for an enterprise.
A great strength of Excel and Access lies in their "tweakability" by the user - the extent of user control. That is also their Achilles Heel - there is a profound scope for human error in developing the logic and formulae in the models/applications, and that is why, from the perspective of stochastic and accounting accuracy, the models need to be independently audited and verified, but certainty in that regard (that all errors have been identified and fixed) is something that was and remains notoriously extremely difficult to achieve - despite the growth of things like spreadsheet auditing tools.
However, having worked on complex models such as ITEM (the UK Independent Treasury Econometric Model) and climate models of the North Sea, I would recommend skepticism towards any plea of incompetence - the "Oh dear, there was an error in the [insert name of scam] financial model" argument. These people aren't necessarily the fools they might have us believe.
For example, in "JPMorgan’s model had not captured this at all...".
Yeah, right.
-IainB (November 12, 2015, 05:03 AM)
--- End quote ---
yes! the last bit is so true!
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