Related papers: How do you know your spreadsheet is right?
Amongst the large number of write-and-throw-away spreadsheets developed for one-time use there is a rather neglected proportion of spreadsheets that are huge, periodically used, and submitted to regular update-cycles like any conventionally…
Despite strong evidence of widespread errors, spreadsheet developers rarely subject their spreadsheets to post-development testing to reduce errors. This may be because spreadsheet developers are overconfident in the accuracy of their…
Accuracy in spreadsheet modelling systems can be reduced due to difficulties with the inputs, the model itself, or the spreadsheet implementation of the model. When the "true" outputs from the system are unknowable, accuracy is evaluated…
This paper discusses the risks and potential impacts of spreadsheet errors in scientific research data in a Neuroscience research centre in the UK. Spreadsheets usage in neuroscience, or indeed any medical discipline, is a largely…
Spreadsheets provide many of the key links between information systems, closing the gap between business needs and the capability of central systems. Recent regulations have brought these vulnerable parts of information supply chains into…
Research on spreadsheet errors began over fifteen years ago. During that time, there has been ample evidence demonstrating that spreadsheet errors are common and nontrivial. Quite simply, spreadsheet error rates are comparable to error…
Few major commercial or economic decisions are made today which are not underpinned by analysis using spreadsheets. It is virtually impossible to avoid making mistakes during their drafting and some of these errors remain, unseen and…
Past studies show that only a small percent of organizations implement and enforce formal rules or informal guidelines for the designing, testing, documenting, using, modifying, sharing and archiving of spreadsheet models. Due to lack of…
Spreadsheets are end-user programs and domain models that are heavily employed in administration, financial forecasting, education, and science because of their intuitive, flexible, and direct approach to computation. As a result,…
Spreadsheet computing is one of the more popular computing methodologies in today's modern society. The spreadsheet application's ease of use and usefulness has enabled non-programmers to perform programming-like tasks in a familiar setting…
Our term "structure discovery" denotes the recovery of structure, such as the grouping of cells, that was intended by a spreadsheet's author but is not explicit in the spreadsheet. We are implementing structure discovery tools in the…
A new MS Excel application has been developed which seeks to reduce the risks associated with the development, operation and auditing of Excel spreadsheets. FormulaDataSleuth provides a means of checking spreadsheet formulas and data as…
Selecting a subset of cells is a common task in data engineering, for example, to remove errors or select only specific parts of a table. Multiple approaches to express this selection exist. One option is numeric indexing, commonly found in…
Spreadsheets offer a supremely successful and intuitive means of processing and exchanging numerical content. Its intuitive ad-hoc nature makes it hugely popular for use in diverse areas including business and engineering, yet these very…
A spreadsheet usually starts as a simple and single-user software artifact, but, as frequent as in other software systems, quickly evolves into a complex system developed by many actors. Often, different users work on different aspects of…
This paper presents a taxonomy for analytical spreadsheet models. It considers both the use case that a spreadsheet is meant to serve, and the engineering resources devoted to its development. We extend a previous three-type taxonomy, to…
I revisit some classic publications on modularity, to show what problems its pioneers wanted to solve. These problems occur with spreadsheets too: to recognise them may help us avoid them.
Spreadsheets are widely used within companies and often form the basis for business decisions. Numerous cases are known where incorrect information in spreadsheets has lead to incorrect decisions. Such cases underline the relevance of…
Most spreadsheet surveys both for reporting use and error focus on the practical application of the spreadsheet in a particular industry. Typically these studies will illustrate that a particular percentage of spreadsheets are used for…
Spreadsheets are critical to data-centric tasks, with rich, structured layouts that enable efficient information transmission. Given the time and expertise required for manual spreadsheet layout design, there is an urgent need for automated…