Excel Spreadsheet Error Leads Austrian Party To Announce Wrong Leader - Slashdot
source link: https://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/23/06/06/1955211/excel-spreadsheet-error-leads-austrian-party-to-announce-wrong-leader
Go to the source link to view the article. You can view the picture content, updated content and better typesetting reading experience. If the link is broken, please click the button below to view the snapshot at that time.
Excel Spreadsheet Error Leads Austrian Party To Announce Wrong Leader
Follow Slashdot stories on Twitter
binspamdupenotthebestofftopicslownewsdaystalestupid freshfunnyinsightfulinterestingmaybe offtopicflamebaittrollredundantoverrated insightfulinterestinginformativefunnyunderrated descriptive typodupeerror
Sign up for the Slashdot newsletter! or check out the new Slashdot job board to browse remote jobs or jobs in your area
Those familiar with Microsoft's spreadsheet program, which is used by millions around the world, were quick to crack jokes, bringing wider attention to the error and ensuing chaos. Babler said at a news conference after his belated apparent victory that the commission should count the vote again for accuracy's sake, local media reported, adding that the debacle was "painful for everyone involved" and bad for the party's image.
-
›
"Someone had messed up an Excel spreadsheet." It was not an error caused by the software.-
It was caused by Excel functioning correctly. Had Excel malfunctioned, it may have mistakenly provided a correct answser.
-
Seriously, Microsoft, you had ONE job.
-
-
I doubt many people reading actually thought that the mistake was caused by a bug in Excel (rather than a buggy spreadsheet).
Writing an Excel spreadsheet is just like any other kind of programming, you need to test your work to make sure there aren't any bugs.
That being said, I wonder if there are established ways of unit testing spreadsheets. It seems complicated (store a bunch of cell inputs/outputs somewhere?) but if the process is critical enough I could see orgs putting in the effort.
-
I can't see counting something as critical as a vote in Excel. It makes no sense. Granted, I've seen some pretty wild uses of Excel and Access (SHUDDER) over the decades, but voting should really be built on something a little stronger than "I wish I were a database."
-
I can't see counting something as critical as a vote in Excel.
I'm trying to figure out who something as simple as counting could be screwed up. Here's a ballot. Candidate A has a vote. Add 1 to the candidate's tally.
Here is a second ballot. Candidate B has a vote. Add 1 to the candidate's tally.
Here is a third ballot. Candidate A has a vote. Add 1 to the candidate's tally.
Repeat until all ballots have been counted. Is it really that difficult to do?
-
Ok, what's your solution?
Custom software? Waaay more likely to screw it up.
Hand tabulation? There's 736 ridings in Germany [wikipedia.org] and I assume that many different votes to tabulate. Not to mention all the proportional ballot rules. You can try it, but you better have a half-dozen people working independently and be willing to spend a while checking your work.
The best approach is would be to do it with a spreadsheet (to get the answer quickly) then manually check the answer later. Which I suspect is exactly what ha
-
-
-
-
Title implies that that error was within Excel itself, not a user error which would have been made regardless of software used.
-
Some software makes it harder to goof up. Excel positively encourages it, if it doesn't deign to add some errors itself. Which it already did happily before chatgpt's "usefully wrong" integration.
-
This is slashdot after all I knew we would get at least one off you clowns trying to make it microsoftâ(TM)s fault
-
-
Hmm, not really. Excel's autoformatting largely makes sense and is easy to change the behavior of. It's not random. Your example is still a user error, not a software issue. Users being too stupid to use it properly is not a defect of the software, and Excel is not that complicated.
-
-
Lmao, it is intuitive and doesn't need any training. You just got to have an average level of intelligence and an average level of comprehension. All people who complain about Excel are deficient in both and shouldn't even be allowed near most electronics.
-
-
Because, more often than not, the problem IS the user.
-
-
-
It doesn't. Try linking something meaningful. Or real.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
It is clear to me an error within the spreadsheet and not Excel itself. Unless they changed the title; this is Slashdot so I highly doubt it.
-
The body tells me that, not the title: "Excel Spreadsheet Error Leads Austrian Party To Announce Wrong Leader".
If it is an error that a user made within the spreadsheet itself (like a bad formula), the fact that it is Excel is superfluous and adds implication that somehow Excel is, at least, partially to blame.-
Excel is describing the type of spreadsheet. Granted it has been a long time but I still remember my English grade school lessons. It is a spreadsheet error not an Excel error or it would have been worded as 'Spreadsheet triggers Excel error...'
The implication is not given at all, that is an assumption on your part.
-
-
-
Really? I saw the title and immediately assumed that someone screwed up the formulae in the spreadsheet. In my many years of using spreadsheets (starting with Lotus 123), human error has been the problem 100% of the time. How young are you that you would assume something different?
Clear headlines are nice, but "idiot-proof" does not exist.
-
Oh no, I also assumed that it was, in fact, human error with a formula or something similar. But the fact of the matter is: that's not what the title implies. There is no need to specify that the user made the error in an Excel spreadsheet versus Google Sheets. Adding Excel to the title implies that Excel is important, for some reason, in this case and it's not.
-
Fair enough, but you seem to assume that "headlines are written by subject experts" which is demonstrably false. Just assume that 98% of headlines are clickbait, and read the article for something that at least wanders near the truth occasionally. Of course the headline is terrible, but it performed it's goal: It made you (and me) read the article and comment on it. Ultimately, the blame for terrible headlines can only be laid upon us, who are affected by them. Humbling, but true.
-
True, though I was going to read it anyway, because "spreadsheet" plus "election" just screams stupid to me, and I was hoping to find out more about the process and/or how they got they chose to do this rather than the error itself. I'm used to clickbait, but if I can make someone feel bad about writing that title, I hope to accomplish that - especially if they wrote it clickbaity on purpose and not just negligently.
-
-
-
-
-
-
You can poke your aye out, leading to a mis-tallied vote.
-
-
So... This person doesn't excel at using Excel?
-
Word.
-
-
-
The answer I got was 5318008
-
-
IMO, a party which cannot even manage to create and follow a reliable process to count internal votes, should not be given any power to govern. How are they going to handle bigger challenges, budgets, spending, etc?
-
Pay someone who knows how to use Excel? I would assume this was some intern that put the wrong value in a cell somewhere and borked the whole thing.
-
The incompetence starts at whoever thought it was a good idea to use Excel in the first place, especially before verifying it matched up.
-
Nothing inherently wrong with using Excel in this situation. It's not like they are launching a man to the moon. if(SUM(A:A)>SUM(B:B),"Candidate A Wins","Candidate B Wins")
-
Yes, there is. It is prone to user-related errors unless a real pro creates a locked down, idiot-proof version that's been extensively tested. Even then, I would question whoever thought it was a good idea to use any spreadsheet software for official election purposes before double and triple checking the data matches up.
-
-
-
Are you saying that the party is too poor today to pay someone who knows how to use Excel, but once elected, they get to tap the taxpayer's money to hire people who know what they are doing?
-
Sounds like how things should work, sure.
-
-
-
-
It was a party-internal vote. They could just as well have announced one of them and be done with it.
-
Except they double-downed on the error and thus we have Biden.
Yes is troll.
-
And to think... if they'd been using LibreOffice, the completely FREE alternative to Microsoft's proprietary software, (being free as in both speech AND beer) instead... the error would likely still have been possible, but the software they used to commit the error would have been far less expensive, and the course of this converstaion thread would run completely differently.
"See," some would assert, "free software isn't ready for Prime Time!"
Then someone would reply to that with something like, "Go a -
Same as PowerPoint. Really not a surprise.
-
Then it would have screwed up even worse, but no one would have found out because AI results are just assumed to be right.
Recommend
About Joyk
Aggregate valuable and interesting links.
Joyk means Joy of geeK