@ExcelAnalytics@mastodon.world
@ExcelAnalytics@mastodon.world avatar

ExcelAnalytics

@ExcelAnalytics@mastodon.world

Patrick O'Beirne of Systems Modelling Ltd (Ireland) provides quality training and consulting in Excel/VBA development, training, testing, model review, analytics, and spreadsheet auditing.

He is the author of the "Spreadsheet Check and Control" book on Best Practice skills in spreadsheet development for end-users. He also developed the XLTest spreadsheet addin for auditing and spreadsheet inventory for compliance projects.

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ExcelAnalytics, to london
@ExcelAnalytics@mastodon.world avatar

Interest Group @EuSpRIG
Annual , , July 4 & 5 2024
https://eusprig2024.eventbrite.co.uk/

Keynotes

, Risk and - Dr Louise Pryor

Spreadsheets, Risk and the Presumption of Correctness - Barrister Stephen Mason

's Critical Risks to Spreadsheets - Dr Advait Sarkar

Expressing Spreadsheet with - Prof. Andy Gordon

Topics
Safer in
applications

25kV, to Excel
@25kV@mas.to avatar

anyone out there ever come across behaviour in where a scatter chart without connecting lines infuriatingly adds them every time you open the file? pls boost for reach

ExcelAnalytics,
@ExcelAnalytics@mastodon.world avatar

@25kV
No. If you upload a small example that behaves like that I could look at it.

aral, to max
@aral@mastodon.ar.al avatar

“‘I would absolutely not fly a Max airplane,’ said Ed Pierson, a former Boeing senior manager. ‘I’ve worked in the factory where they were built, and I saw the pressure employees were under to rush the planes out the door. I tried to get them to shut down before the first crash.’

‘I would tell my family to avoid the Max. I would tell everyone, really,’ said Joe Jacobsen, a former engineer at Boeing and the Federal Aviation Administration.”

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-01-30/boeing-max-9-flying-again-after-door-panel-blowout

ExcelAnalytics,
@ExcelAnalytics@mastodon.world avatar

@aral how can you avoid them? You have no idea what specific plane the airline (eg Ryanair) will schedule for the flight you book months or weeks ahead.

ExcelAnalytics,
@ExcelAnalytics@mastodon.world avatar

@Virginicus They ran out of traffic quota and are paused. I found on Flightaware.com that my flight is on an Airbus A320 👍

Weirdaholic, to random German
@Weirdaholic@snowmans.land avatar

There is so much potential with using threaded comments in excel to turn cells into whole datasets, but no, microsoft doesn't want me to do just that, lol.

ExcelAnalytics,
@ExcelAnalytics@mastodon.world avatar

@dzedus @Weirdaholic @kkarhan
But as yet nothing like the access to the Excel and Office object model that VBA has.

ExcelAnalytics,
@ExcelAnalytics@mastodon.world avatar

@Weirdaholic @dzedus @kkarhan
In that case, do what you know works now, and make a note of what seems hard work, or awkward or convoluted or difficult to maintain when changes happen. Then post a question along the lines of "Here's how I do this, is there a better way?"
With examples of the data structure because otherwise we can't visualise what you have and what you want.
Eg "I currently have to manually edit this data on the left to look like the data on the right; can this be automated?"

ExcelAnalytics,
@ExcelAnalytics@mastodon.world avatar

@dzedus @Weirdaholic @kkarhan

Maybe the answer is complex 😉

I use the Excel-L maillist. You'd still have to ask in the same way. It's harder than mastodon because you can't attach images, just plain text. There are many other good forums such as @mrexcel (Bill Jelen)

But if you want a solution for #google #sheets say so. I'm not so familiar with that.

cs, to Excel
@cs@mastodon.sdf.org avatar

I don't often accidentally turn on in , but when I do, it is a bit disorienting for a couple of seconds.

For coworkers, it is the end of the world.

ExcelAnalytics,
@ExcelAnalytics@mastodon.world avatar

@cs
But so handy for precise positioning for display purposes.

ct_bergstrom, to random
@ct_bergstrom@fediscience.org avatar

I wanted to consolidate a few thoughts on google, misinformation, large language models, enshittification, and the fate of the web as we know it.

It started when Carl Zimmer shared this remarkable example of Google being fooled by machine-generated bullshit online.

ExcelAnalytics,
@ExcelAnalytics@mastodon.world avatar

@ct_bergstrom
"The search engine business is a curious internet business. The better you are at it, the less time people spend on your website—and the less ad revenue, among other things, you receive"

Same for corporate websites and intranets. As @gerrymcgovern says, visitors are there to get something done,.not spend time

design_law, to random
@design_law@mastodon.social avatar

This. This is why I stopped posting over there:

"People don’t come to Twitter for its far-right hate content. Nor do the advertisers come to market to them....The fact of the matter is, people come to Twitter for news, culture, discussions. By staying, you don’t hold any ground, you maintain the viability of a platform hell-bent on promoting far-right ideology. So long as there’s content other than hate, people will have a reason to stay."

https://throwawayopinions.io/the-paradox-of-intolerance.html

ExcelAnalytics,
@ExcelAnalytics@mastodon.world avatar

@design_law
Looking at the replies... this is the equivalent of the Twitter egg which makes me handle the content with care.

jugmac00, to Excel German
@jugmac00@fosstodon.org avatar

Did you know that genes had to be renamed because spreadsheets were messing with the names?

Fantastic keynote by @evelina at about the greatest fails in data handling in science - tl/dr don't use .

ExcelAnalytics,
@ExcelAnalytics@mastodon.world avatar

@jugmac00 @evelina
Or use it knowledgeable
Google for my blog article

Sysmod Excel gene curation and mutation

slothrop, to Excel
@slothrop@chaos.social avatar

deleted_by_author

    •
    ExcelAnalytics,
    @ExcelAnalytics@mastodon.world avatar

    @slothrop
    It highlights them in colour as you complete each pair but cannot 'just close everything ' unless you allow it to autocorrect (by entering and accepting its suggestion of a fix) and it will often get that wrong.

    ExcelAnalytics,
    @ExcelAnalytics@mastodon.world avatar

    @slothrop
    Good idea. As MS isn't mastodon, use the feedback feature in the app to ask for auto completion . They can't really fill in dummy parameters as the number can be variable
    Or maybe they could put in a minimal number of commas and placeholders.

    jhilden, to Excel
    @jhilden@vis.social avatar

    Cursed / Powerpoint fact:
    If you export a chart as SVG and import it into Powerpoint and then convert it for editing by using ”convert to shape”, then all type gets upscaled from the size set in Excel by 3.4375 times, apparently.

    Seems Excel does some weird thing with viewport units for SVG export.

    Same Excel chart but expanded into editable graphics, all type is huge and running over borders and even out of the page.

    ExcelAnalytics,
    @ExcelAnalytics@mastodon.world avatar

    @jhilden why not just save the chart as a picture file in the first place?

    arstechnica, to random
    @arstechnica@mastodon.social avatar

    US judge: Art created solely by artificial intelligence cannot be copyrighted

    "US copyright law protects only works of human creation," judge writes.

    https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/08/us-judge-art-created-solely-by-artificial-intelligence-cannot-be-copyrighted/?utm_brand=arstechnica&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social

    ExcelAnalytics,
    @ExcelAnalytics@mastodon.world avatar

    @arstechnica
    The human activity is crafting the prompt. Could that be copyrighted like any other design?

    arstechnica, to random
    @arstechnica@mastodon.social avatar

    Tech error let people with empty bank accounts withdraw hundreds in cash

    Bank of Ireland says the problem wasn't connected to a cyberattack.

    https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/08/tech-error-let-people-with-empty-bank-accounts-withdraw-hundreds-in-cash/?utm_brand=arstechnica&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social

    ExcelAnalytics,
    @ExcelAnalytics@mastodon.world avatar

    @arstechnica
    People hallucinating magic money

    rodhilton, to random
    @rodhilton@mastodon.social avatar

    Right now if you search for "country in Africa that starts with the letter K":

    • DuckDuckGo will link to an alphabetical list of countries in Africa which includes Kenya.

    • Google, as the first hit, links to a ChatGPT transcript where it claims that there are none, and summarizes to say the same.

    This is because ChatGPT at some point ingested this popular joke:

    "There are no countries in Africa that start with K."
    "What about Kenya?"
    "Kenya suck deez nuts?"

    Google Search is over.

    Google country in africa that starts with the letter k X & @& Q Images South africa Maps News Shopping Books Videos Flights. Finance About 318,000,000 results (0.55 seconds) While there are 54 recognized countries in Africa, none of them begin with the letter "K". B Emersent Mind The closest is Kenya, which starts with a "K" Did you know that there s no countey in . e wen fca e st withche ler 7 sound, but is actually spelled with a "K" sound. & : 1 It's always interesting to learn new trivia facts like this. & Emergent Mind https://www.emergentmind.com » posts » did-youknow-.. i Did you know that there is no country in Africa that starts with ... @ Aboutfeatured snippets - J Feedback

    ExcelAnalytics,
    @ExcelAnalytics@mastodon.world avatar

    @rodhilton
    Yup

    Emergentmind

    GossiTheDog, to random
    @GossiTheDog@cyberplace.social avatar

    deleted_by_author

    •
    ExcelAnalytics,
    @ExcelAnalytics@mastodon.world avatar

    @GossiTheDog
    For advice they should have listened to, see the UK ICO guidelines on disclosing data safely. Describes most of the ways to fail as well as what to do.

    ExcelAnalytics, to infosec
    @ExcelAnalytics@mastodon.world avatar

    @EuSpRIG
    The data breach in the is another in long list of accidental disclosures of data by . Several NHS trusts have been fined by the UK for revealing personal data.

    Here is the ICO Guidance on "How to disclose information safely" :

    https://ico.org.uk/media/for-organisations/documents/2021/2618998/how-to-disclose-information-safely-20201224.pdf

    It warns of risks like pivot tables, hidden ranges, metadata, etc.

    For more horror stories, visit www.eusprig.org

    ct_bergstrom, to random
    @ct_bergstrom@fediscience.org avatar

    I think there's a reasonable case to be made that Claude Shannon anticipated ChatGPT and its use in spreading disinformation.

    There's a remarkable footnote in Jimmy Soni and Rob Goodman's biography A Mind at Play, in which Shannon extrapolates from his famous experiments in computing the entropy of the English language to suggest that an automated language generator could do a higher-order version of the same task and it would look like human writing.

    ExcelAnalytics,
    @ExcelAnalytics@mastodon.world avatar

    @ct_bergstrom
    Duckspeak

    ExcelAnalytics, to random
    @ExcelAnalytics@mastodon.world avatar

    Hi @feditips
    I searched for 'eusprig' but it found nothing. But there is an account @EuSpRIG which I find when I put in the full address. How can I find people just by name, without knowing the server they might be on?

    ExcelAnalytics,
    @ExcelAnalytics@mastodon.world avatar

    @feditips Thank you, so now that I've followed @EuSpRIG, other users on mastodown.world should be able to find it now?

    gfarrell, to Excel
    @gfarrell@mastodon.world avatar

    : Why using 's tool caused -19 results to be lost https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-54423988

    ExcelAnalytics,
    @ExcelAnalytics@mastodon.world avatar

    @gfarrell
    and we never found out exactly how. Many theories. If they told us it would be a useful lesson for others.
    https://sysmod.wordpress.com/2020/10/13/uk-covid-19-track-trace-excel-snafu-uncontrolled-spreadsheets-lead-to-data-loss/

    pvonhellermannn, (edited ) to TwitterMigration
    @pvonhellermannn@mastodon.green avatar

    I've just published my first ever blog: "The Tragedy of the Non-Commons"

    I wrote it in July, frustrated by a Twitter thread about how the Tragedy of the continues to be taught at universities. I then left it (it's somewhat experiemental) but with and coinciding this week, I just wanted it to be out there. Would love for it to be shared here on our and grateful for any comments

    https://medium.com/@p.vonhellermann/the-tragedy-of-the-non-commons-4bfad884cdbe

    ExcelAnalytics,
    @ExcelAnalytics@mastodon.world avatar

    @pvonhellermannn
    An example of the tragedy of the commons would be fishing. Many fishing areas were nearly fished out with smaller and smaller returns. Until governments stepped in and imposed quotas that many fishers objected strongly to. It's natural that those who had to give up fishing would oppose restrictions but for the sake of the fishing grounds it had to be done.

    ExcelAnalytics,
    @ExcelAnalytics@mastodon.world avatar

    @pvonhellermannn
    Yes, I had been only thinking of unregulated commons.
    Smaller scale managed shared resources are different, and the risk of them being taken over by those competitors in a position to destroy them are real.

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