WHY, indeed!

  • Thread starter Thread starter hrlngrv
  • Start date Start date
H

hrlngrv

Thought I'd share this one. Someone somewhere in the company I work for
designed a database solution for an asset-liability matching system.
The design used separate tables of contract numbers for generating
assets and liabilities. At year-end, one of my unit's contract numbers
was in one table but not the other. Result: a > US$9 million screw-up
on a single account.

Maybe spreadsheet errors are more common than database errors, but
database errors tend to cost more in the long run.
 
rotflmao - Agreed 100% and to me that all comes down to people knowing their
data. I don't care what system it's in, if I have to play with it then I'm
always looking for those little benchmarks and sanity checks that give me a
warm feeling that the data is right. I see far too many people that blindly
trust the data simply because the machine said so.

Have to play fair though and admit to having seen a mistake of about half
that magnitude in a spreadsheet model. Again though, the 'analyst' hadn't
noticed that a number total had not changed once in a series of months (New
entries had gone past the existing formula's range and just weren't picked
up). Machine had done exactly what it was told, but it just didn't register
with the 'analyst'. I wasn't as charitable as some because this is one of
my pet peeves, and to me it just comes down to diligence.
 
Hi

i know of a 50 million dollar error in a spreadsheet ... on figures that
were going be presented to the board the next day ...
the guy who had set it up didn't know about SUMIF and had manually gone
through 2000 records and added up values meeting a criteria, problem is that
he missed a few! ... when i looked at it and showed him SUMIF i said - oh
well, you were only $50 out on doing it manually ... that's when he said the
values were in millions! (oops!)

Cheers
JulieD
 
$50 million here, $50 million there. Soon you're talking real money!

Bill

Hi

i know of a 50 million dollar error in a spreadsheet ... on figures that
were going be presented to the board the next day ...
the guy who had set it up didn't know about SUMIF and had manually gone
through 2000 records and added up values meeting a criteria, problem is
that
he missed a few! ... when i looked at it and showed him SUMIF i said -
oh
well, you were only $50 out on doing it manually ... that's when he said
the
values were in millions! (oops!)

Cheers
JulieD
 
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