The Subtle Tyranny Of Spreadsheets

pipingguy writes "I found this link on a CAD-related mailing list which questioned the current state of spreadsheet usage. Since using spreadsheets is often only one step away from PowerPoint mastery, I thought it worthy of submission." An excerpt: "The second distortion caused by conventional spreadsheets is more subtle. It's described in a 1980s paper, written by university researcher Jeffrey Kottemann and others concerning what they called 'Performance, Beliefs, and the Illusion of Control.' The paper described an experiment in which subjects were asked to perform a planning task using different tools, some of them with elaborate what-if capability and others without it." Yup, it's a ZD/Yahoo link, but it raises good questions."