Excel Spreadsheet Error Leads Austrian Party To Announce Wrong Leader (washingtonpost.com) 65
A major Austrian opposition political party on Monday corrected the results of a closely contested leadership election after it announced the wrong winner over the weekend due to a "technical" error: Someone had messed up an Excel spreadsheet. From a report: At a convention on Saturday, Austria's Social Democrats (SPO) declared that Hans Peter Doskozil, governor of the eastern Burgenland province, was the new leader of the center-left party. But on Monday, the party said Andreas Babler, a small-town mayor and lesser-known figure, had actually won, with about 52 percent of the votes. "Unfortunately, the paper ballots did not match the result that was announced digitally," Michaela Grubesa, head of the SPÃ- electoral commission, said a news conference. "Due to a colleague's technical error in the Excel list, the result was mixed up."
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.
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.
So the title is misleading. Great journalism. (Score:1)
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It was caused by Excel functioning correctly. Had Excel malfunctioned, it may have mistakenly provided a correct answser.
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Seriously, Microsoft, you had ONE job.
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"Someone had messed up an Excel spreadsheet." It was not an error caused by the software.
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.
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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."
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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?
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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."
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
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Spreadsheets are never the correct solution to complicated data collection and reporting issues. I know it seems like it to folks that only know spreadsheets, but once things pass the "row of numbers to add up" level of complication, there's always a better solution. And yes, that better solution may take a tiny bit more effort up front. But it's hardly a "custom software" situation either. It's a decent database with a couple people good at writing queries and somebody not afraid to smack them over the hea
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Spreadsheets are never the correct solution to complicated data collection and reporting issues. I know it seems like it to folks that only know spreadsheets, but once things pass the "row of numbers to add up" level of complication, there's always a better solution. And yes, that better solution may take a tiny bit more effort up front. But it's hardly a "custom software" situation either. It's a decent database with a couple people good at writing queries and somebody not afraid to smack them over the head when they get it wrong.
A database for storing the numbers sure, but SQL is hardly a language less likely to produce bugs than a spreadsheet.
Again, I'm far from convinced that a spreadsheet isn't the answer here.
Excel was just the wrong tool here. Which is not shocking, considering how many in the business world consider it the ultimate do-anything software. Hell, my dad was an accountant for decades and *STILL* insists on writing letters in Excel.
Ok, letters sounds really weird, but I think there's a good reason that business folks love Excel so much, it's a tool that does a really good job of achieving their requirements.
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Spreadsheets are never the correct solution to complicated data collection and reporting issues. I know it seems like it to folks that only know spreadsheets, but once things pass the "row of numbers to add up" level of complication, there's always a better solution. And yes, that better solution may take a tiny bit more effort up front. But it's hardly a "custom software" situation either. It's a decent database with a couple people good at writing queries and somebody not afraid to smack them over the head when they get it wrong.
A database for storing the numbers sure, but SQL is hardly a language less likely to produce bugs than a spreadsheet.
Again, I'm far from convinced that a spreadsheet isn't the answer here.
Excel was just the wrong tool here. Which is not shocking, considering how many in the business world consider it the ultimate do-anything software. Hell, my dad was an accountant for decades and *STILL* insists on writing letters in Excel.
Ok, letters sounds really weird, but I think there's a good reason that business folks love Excel so much, it's a tool that does a really good job of achieving their requirements.
In certain cases, I'd agree. But if you've ever been involved in a business situation where Excel takes over data collection, even when it shouldn't, you'd know why it's not the right tool in a lot of cases. A collection of data that needs accessed by several different people at the same time, updated frequently, used for inventory? That should not be an excel spreadsheet, yet a lot of folks will fight tooth and nail to avoid doing it any other way because it's considered the "default best tool in all situa
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In certain cases, I'd agree. But if you've ever been involved in a business situation where Excel takes over data collection, even when it shouldn't, you'd know why it's not the right tool in a lot of cases. A collection of data that needs accessed by several different people at the same time, updated frequently, used for inventory? That should not be an excel spreadsheet, yet a lot of folks will fight tooth and nail to avoid doing it any other way because it's considered the "default best tool in all situations."
To me, voting hits me as one of those data areas where Excel doesn't fit the need. Granted, this whole argument can basically boil down to, "Any idiot can fuck up with Excel. It takes special training to fuck up using SQL!"
The thing that Excel well.. excels at, is calculations. Precisely the sorta complicated calculations your dealing with when you have a proportional voting and 700+ ridings.
That doesn't mean every riding chair has access to the main spreadsheet, or even that Excel is where the raw voting numbers get stored permanently, though I don't think you need a DB for that either. The ridings themselves will have the actual number and to verify you email back the tables of Ridings and vote breakdowns to everyone and th
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Excel is plenty strong, it is probably Microsoft's best effort. I still use Excel '97 sometimes instead of LO Calc because the interface is so much better, and it's still fast and still does 99% of what I want from a spreadsheet.
What it is not is an example of good UI for this purpose.
Bad Title (Score:2)
Title implies that that error was within Excel itself, not a user error which would have been made regardless of software used.
Eh (Score:1)
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.
Re: Eh (Score:2)
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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.
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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.
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Because, more often than not, the problem IS the user.
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It doesn't. Try linking something meaningful. Or real.
Re: Eh (Score:1)
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You cannot change the behavior of some of Excel's auto-formatting, you must explicitly change the format before entering the data, usually by adding an apostrophe before entering the data to make it "text". That is hard to do when copying and pasting data.
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I got another, what do you and an incel have in common? You are both cowards.
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Yes, you can. Or, simply format the cells with the exact format you want ahead of time. You can also create a new Excel template so that when you open a new spreadsheet, it uses the formatting you want as default.
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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.
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The implication is not given at all, that is an assumption on your part.
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Excel is irrelevant to any of the relevant details of what happened, ergo it doesn't need to be in the title. There is no reason to describe the type of spreadsheet in the title.
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The proposed headline was probably Excel Error, which would have more strongly implied it was an error in Excel, so the editor changed it to Excel Spreadsheet Error to make it clear that it was an error in the spreadsheet. The confusion arises from the fact that people don't say "I'm gonna do it in a spreadsheet", they say "I'm gonna do it in Excel".
The headline is grammatically correct, if awkward, and does not say what you want it to say.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
The error is using Excel in the first place. (Score:2)
The error is using Excel in the first place.
HAHAHA Excel.
Don't blame your tools (Score:3)
Pencil Error Leads Austrian Party To Announce Wrong Leader
The problem with pencils (Score:1)
You can poke your aye out, leading to a mis-tallied vote.
Irony? (Score:3, Funny)
"Due to a colleague's technical error in the Excel list, the result was mixed up."
So... This person doesn't excel at using Excel?
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At least it wasn't global (Score:1)
It could've been a hardware problem from a major vendor [ku.edu].
You can check to see if your Pentium has the FDIV bug by entering the following formula in the Windows calculator:
(4195835 / 3145727) * 3145727 - 4195835
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The answer I got was 5318008
As a white male he probably got 55378008
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Okay modded down as a troll. I admit, maybe he was a really fat white male.
Non Pay Walled Link (Score:4, Informative)
That is all.
https://www.theguardian.com/wo... [theguardian.com]
Incompetent should not govern (Score:2)
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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.
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The incompetence starts at whoever thought it was a good idea to use Excel in the first place, especially before verifying it matched up.
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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.
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>> Nothing inherently wrong with using Excel
Sure. Yeah.
Nothing inherently wrong on walking on the top of a barrier of a bridge.
The guy who fall from the bridge and died sure did not die because he took the decision to walk on the barrier.
That decision was really really sound, you just have to have some basic equilibrium skills.
Bridge barriers are made to walk on.
Excel is the perfect database software to handle in a perfectly auditable manner the results of an election.
Sure. Yeah.
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At least it didn't matter (Score:2)
It was a party-internal vote. They could just as well have announced one of them and be done with it.
Just like Trump 2020 (Score:1)
Except they double-downed on the error and thus we have Biden.
Yes is troll.
Comment removed (Score:3)
Excel makes you dumb (Score:2)
Same as PowerPoint. Really not a surprise.
If they had only used AI (Score:2)
Dewey Defeats Truman all over again (Score:2)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
75 years later, a mistake repeats
/ anyone who watched Cheers should know this
Shit happens (Score:2)
If /. and the editors can't even spell "SPÖ" right (looking at you, "SPÃ-") - why blame the Sozialdemokratische Partei Österreichs for fat-fingering Excel?