Use of .xls file format caused Public Health England to temporarily loose track of Covid-19 results

tgb417
Use of .xls file format caused Public Health England to temporarily loose track of Covid-19 results

Although this BBC report "Excel: Why using Microsoft's tool caused Covid-19 results to be lost" is a humbling reminder about the impact of the work we do as data analysts, data scientists.  

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Mistakes like this can and do happen.  Lots of data cleanup work comes from these mistakes.  I know that I've dealt with these kinds of issues often. 

I really enjoyed Matt Parker's humorous and actually useful review of the situation in his YouTube Video The Spreadsheet New Network: UK Government loses data because of Excel mistake. 

https://youtu.be/zUp8pkoeMss 

What do folks think? Is this kind of humour useful in educating our colleagues and reminding ourselves to be careful?

 

--Tom
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