Re: I'd rather edit my spreadsheet with a text editor

[Dave Long <address@hidden>]

>                                                         (Hom many
> real-world spreadsheets do you suppose have an unnoticed error due
> to a stray keypress?)

It'n not uncommon:
<http://www.cs.uml.edu/~hgoodell/EndUser/blend/papers/Margaret_Burnett_et_al.html>
> There is a substantial body of research showing that spreadsheets often
> contain bugs. For example, field audits of real-world spreadsheets have
> found that 20-40% of these contain bugs, and that between 1% and 4% of
> all cells contain bugs [Teo and Tan 1997]. Also, in an early empirical
> study of experienced spreadsheet users, 44% of the spreadsheets created
> by those users were found to contain user-generated bugs [Brown and
> Gould 1987]. Results of several later studies have been similar:
> between 10% and 90% of the spreadsheets examined have been found to
> contain bugs. (See [Panko and Halverson 1996] for a survey of these
> studies). Compounding this problem, creators of spreadsheets seem to
> express unwarranted confidence in the reliability of their programs
> [Wilcox et al. 1997].

-Dave