Hank [BS/MSEE,
MSM $$$, Ph.D. Mgmt] teaches Entrepreneurship
&
Innovation and Marketing
@ Purdue University, W. Lafayette, Indiana USA.
His interests include students, anything involving technology, Social
Marketing,
brain-computer interfaces, and boomers as
entrepreneurs. He is also coordinator of Purdue's Certificate
in Entrepreneurship Program. Hank can be
reached 24/7 here: hank -at-entr200-dot-com.
Put the following into a cell in an Excel spreadsheet: “=77.1*850″ without the quotes. The result, 100,000 instead of the correct 65,535 might surprise you. I’ll leave it as an exercise for the student, as is often stated in geometry proofs, to speculate on the potential impact of such errors. The Evil Empire Strikes! Hank
Hank has finally cracked the walls of the evil empire. Why does it give the incorrect answer?
Hmm…Mine gave the correct answer…
Mine gave me the correct answer too.
Actually, it gave me 100,000. I forgot that 100,000 was in the incorrect answer. That is strange that they would have a bug like that. I would think that they could fix that with a window’s update.
For Katie, I should have stated this is an Excel 2007 thing, that has to do with the way tables are handled. Microsoft is, in fact, working on a fix for it. Mac-heads should have no problems either. However you attempt to explain the defrugality away, it is still what it is, something that should never have occurred! I’m certain that buried somewhere down in the umpteenth page of the boilerplated User’s Agreement is a COA (cover our ass) statement about using at your own risk. How would you like to have lost mega $$$$, or a contract bid, or crashed a plane, or lost lives as a result of this error?
I’m pretty sure I would be pretty mad about that. I don’t know too many people who double check the Excel formulas with calculators and handwritten math.
That’s why I rather use my good old trustworthy TI 83 calculator instead of Microsoft Excel. Although I have Office for Mac(so that bug doesn’t happen with me), I’ve never been a big fan of Microsoft Office.
we’ll i dont have exce or m.s. office but now i know it cant be fully trusted.
This is probably the only problem, but who knows. You can’t say that Microsoft has bad software just because their excel calculator has a tiny problem. I am sure that you could get a patch that would fix this problem. Unfortunately, it does scare me now when i use excel. If they messed up here, there might be other errors.
Holy mackerel!! I as an Aero Major rely heavily on Excel and Matlab(another mega pain in the a$$ software) for my math and programming solutions! I could have literally killed many people thanks to the evil empire!
Open Office anyone?! Good to know we always have choices!
Im so confused… I have no idea how I am supposed to do this. I am so computer retarded
This doesn’t surprise me. Microsoft conglomerate taking advantage of their unknowing consumers.
Hank.. care to explain?