Tim Harford (via Simon Willison) The Tyranny of Spreadsheets <--- don't use them in life and death situations <-- 1500 people died in England because of spreadsheets <--- real moral of the story is don't use anything in production without tests?

Discovered Jul 28, 2021. Tim Harford (via Simon Willison) The Tyranny of Spreadsheets <— don’t use them in life and death situations <— “When used by a trained accountant to carry out double-entry bookkeeping, a long-established system with inbuilt error detection, Excel is a perfectly professional tool. But when pressed into service by genetics resear:4000chers or contact tracers, it’s like using your Swiss Army Knife to fit a kitchen because it’s the tool you have closest at hand. Not impossible, but hardly advisable.` AND

“Fetzer and Graeber have calculated a conservative estimate of the number of people who died, unknown victims of the spreadsheet error. They think the death toll is at least 1,500 people.” <— 125000 infections means 1500 people died because of a spreadsheet?!?
I think the real moral of the story here is not to use anything in production without tests or some sort of inbuilt error detection.
Previously: