Errors in Spreadsheets are Pandemic

G Roper writes "Studies show that most spreadsheets have critical errors in one percent of their cells, well beyond a permissible level. Here are some news stories about spreadsheet errors. Spreadsheets won't protect a firm from liability when they are audited and spreadsheet errors found: spreadsheets are not secure, provide no audit trail and won't pass HIPAA or Sarbanes-Oxley auditing. How are Slashdotters coping with the proliferation of spreadsheets in the face of greater legal accountability and auditing?"

Comments

Easy question.

[Anonymous Coward]

"How are Slashdotters coping with the proliferation of spreadsheets in the face of greater legal accountability and auditing?"

With a pencil. haha.

I hear we need:

[j2crux]

Well as one of my bosses says, "We need more Double E masters."
Alas he doesnt mean Electrial Engineers, but "Excel Experts."
He's very bitter about his education :P.

Re:I hear we need:

[BMonger]

I hear they have some great "Excel Expert Masters" in the department of redundancy department.

Re:Hardware?

[j0e_average]

Actually, the editors had all the stories queued up for the day in Excel. They managed to sort the list incorrectly, which caused this story to be posted under Hardware by mistake.

Minimize the errors

[MobyDisk]

It is difficult to eliminate the errors, so a better solution is to minimize them. The easiest way to do this is to add extra workbooks named "sheet2" and "sheet3" with thousands of extra cells in them. Then, the percentage of error is 3 times lower. Example:

Before: "sheet1" has 50x50 cells, with 25 errors. That's 25 / 50^2 = 1% errors.
After: Add "sheet2" and "sheet3" with another 50x50 cells. Now, the error rate is 25 / 50^2 / 3 = 1/3 % error.

According to my spreadsheet, that is a much better error rate!

Re:spreadsheet errors are hard to fix

[heinousjay]

Type-o's?

Negative.