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Excel : Destroyer of Economies
http://www.x404.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=18734		 Page 1 of 1
Author:  jonbwfc [ Thu Apr 18, 2013 6:17 pm ]
Post subject:  Excel : Destroyer of Economies
How an error in an Excel spreadsheet means influential academic paper is, well, wrong.
Author:  pcernie [ Thu Apr 18, 2013 9:37 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Excel : Destroyer of Economies
It's definitely a pain in the hole, that much we know :lol:
Author:  Amnesia10 [ Thu Apr 18, 2013 11:30 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Excel : Destroyer of Economies
Quote:
The UK's 19-year stretch of high debt and moderate growth (during the period between 1946 and 1964, the debt-to-GDP ratio was above 90 percent, and growth averaged 2.4 percent) is conflated into a single data point and treated as equivalent to New Zealand's single year of debt above 90 percent, during which it experienced growth of -7.6.

During that period there was full employment in the UK. There was no unemployment unless you chose to not work. The fact that they used Excel appears to be irrelevant when the data in was garbage.

Quote:
This link was always controversial, with many economists proposing that the correlation between high debt and low growth was just as likely to have a causal link in the other direction to that proposed by Reinhart and Rogoff: it's not that high debt causes low growth, but rather that low growth leads to high debt.

This is the real answer, but many politicians do not care about that. They want to use it as a reason to shrink the state.
Author:  big_D [ Fri Apr 19, 2013 4:27 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Excel : Destroyer of Economies
So, nothing to do with Excel and everything to do with nobody double checking their work, before they published!

It reminds me of the case against Lotus in the late 80s, where a company used 1-2-3 to produce quotes and the new quote was 3 lines longer than previous quotes and caused the engineers to under quote the work by $60,000 or so (ISTR), because they didn't extend the formula to cover the new lines, they assumed that 1-2-3 would magically recognise that 3 extra lines had data and adjust the formula itself.

Lotus won the case. Software is no magical remedy for idiocy.
Author:  Amnesia10 [ Fri Apr 19, 2013 4:47 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Excel : Destroyer of Economies
big_D wrote:
So, nothing to do with Excel and everything to do with nobody double checking their work, before they published!

It seems that some are more interested in blaming Microsoft than checking the facts. The fact that they produced the report on Excel is of minor significance. It could have just as easily been done with Numbers or Open Office. When I initially read the headline I thought that it was going to be similar to the floating point problem many years ago. I was drawn more to the fact that the selection of data was also highly selective.
Author:  BigRedX [ Sun Apr 21, 2013 8:18 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Excel : Destroyer of Economies
Is that what Excel's for?

I've never seen it used for anything other than cutter guides for large poly bags.
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