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It is very clear that they are useful but it is also very clear that they can be problematic. In Finance people check each number - multiple times per day - because there is no way to write tests in Excel. Sounds good? Until you can trust the people crunching the numbers, of course. Would you build a bridge like that? Or a building? I think it is worth to talk about this problem and, at the very minimum, inform people there are alternative ways to crunch numbers that are more reliable than Excel.


Lots of engineering calculations are indeed done in Excel, it's very common.


> Would you build a bridge like that? Or a building?

That's exactly what's being done. I work in mechanical engineering and Excel is the primary calculation tool all over the industry.




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