[AccessD] I was not going to post this

For some reason I ended up joining a list about Excel
EXCEL-L at peach.ease.lsoft.com),  mistaking it for one our our lists. Wow was
I wrong/ These people need more than a lifetime of help. Unfortunately, as
I age, I don't have that much time.. .

To be fair, it's a user's group not a developer's group, and it does shed
some light on the differenence.

The scary part is that some of these people fancy themselves as "Quants",
short for Quantitative Analysts, which means that they are risking the
hard-earned money that others have made and invested in this or that fund.
And I am aware of many of their algorithms, having once worked for a
Bermudian hedge fund, which at least had the sense to use SQL Server rather
then Excel.

This seriously frightens me. These Excel listers, save on or two, don't
even know that there is a difference between a Range and an Array.

The prospect that these people are playing with millions of dollars of
money belonging to other people is truly frightening. The up-side is that I
have invested zero dollars in the opinions of these fools; the down-side is
that many several millions have, and I fear for their prospects.

I guess what I am saying is this: if you want to realize what a valuable
group this one is, just go visit that one for a minute or two. To think
that these people are waging millions of other people's dollars on their
"feelings" is ghastly.

Hold onto your wallet; trust no one, especially if they come bearing a
spreadsheet.Yes, there are tools available to audit spreadsheets, and I
trust them. But in their absence. do not trust anyone. These people are
jokers, fools or scammers. Take your pick.

I do not fancy myself as an Excel guru. But once I learned the model, I had
no problem doing some fancy footwork in Excel. Bur rhis goes to way that
there is a difference between a programmer and a user. The frightening part
is that users equipped with Excel are making decisions involving millions
of other people's dollars.

-- 
Arthur
Cell: 647.710.1314

Prediction is difficult, especially of the future.
  -- Niels Bohr