The Folly of Blaming Excel

"The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do."

—B. F. Skinner

The three killer apps of the Internet era are e-mail, the browser, and Microsoft Excel. Go into just about any office in the corporate world and you're likely to find them all not only installed on laptops and desktops, but concurrently in use.

When an application reaches critical mass, you'll find no shortage of detractors. Excel is no exception to this rule. Add Stephen Gandel to the list. As he writes on Forbes in Damn Excel! How the 'most important software application of all time' is ruining the world:

In the wake of last year’s $6.2 billion JPMorgan Chase trading loss, traders have been fired, top executives have been hauled in front of Congress, and the FBI, among other regulators, is investigating. But you know who really needs to be questioned? Bill Gates. According to an internal report on the trading loss released in February, the model that was supposed to monitor and limit the amount of risk the bank’s London traders were taking was “operated through a series of Excel spreadsheets, which had to be completed manually, by a process of copying and pasting data from one spreadsheet to another.” One key measure was added when it should have been averaged. [Emphasis mine.] The result: Risk officers at JPMorgan believed the credit derivatives bets were half as risky as they actually were. So, I guess, CEO Jamie Dimon can pass $3.1 billion off on Excel. The rest is still on him.

Microsoft's Mixed Bag