Trouble with Spreadsheets

by Debra · Published August 18, 2020 · Updated August 17, 2020

You’ve heard horror stories about spreadsheets, I’m sure, and you’ve probably encountered a few nightmares in your own work. Mathematician, and stand-up comedian, Matt Parker, discusses a few of these problems in his video, When Spreadsheets Attack!

When Spreadsheets Attack!

Matt does a great job of presenting all the spreadsheet examples in an engaging and informative way. You can learn more about him on his Stand=up Maths website.

And remember, way back in 2014, Dr. Felienne Hermans told us to stop blaming spreadsheets when things go wrong! You can see her Enron numbers in this article abstract

Video Timeline:

01:40 – European Spreadsheet Risks Interest Group

02:45 – Dr. Felienne Hermans and the Enron spreadsheets

11:30 – Gene name errors

Gene Name Errors

One of the problems that Matt discussed, stating at the 11:30 mark in his video is the problem with using gene codes in Excel — sometimes the codes are automatically changed to dates!

For example, there is a gene named DEC2, and Excel sometimes converts that to December 2nd in the current year.

Now, after years of problems, the official gene-naming committee is changing those names, to avoid codes that could be interpreted as a date.

You can easily avoid those data problems though, with these steps:

When typing, format the cell as Text first, or type an apostrophe before the value
When opening a csv file, choose a data type for each column, in Step 3 of the Text Import Wizard