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Via arclight on Mastodon ( https://oldbytes.space/@arclight/112367348253414752 ): spreadsheet authors/developers have an accuracy rate of 96%-99% when writing new formulas (and, of course, there are no unit tests in the world of spreadsheets). As they put it: “the uncomfortable truth is that any but the most trivial spreadsheets contain errors. It’s not a question of if there are errors, it’s a question of how many and how severe.”
In the spreadsheet error community, both academics and practitioners generally have ignored the rich findings produced by a century of human error research. These findings can suggest ways to reduce errors; we can then test these suggestions empirically. In addition, research on human error seems to suggest that several common prescriptions and expectations for reducing errors are likely to be incorrect. Among the key conclusions from human error research are that thinking is bad, that spreadsheets are not the cause of spreadsheet errors, and that reducing errors is extremely difficult. In past EuSpRIG conferences, many papers have shown that most spreadsheets contain errors, even after careful development. Most spreadsheets, in fact, have material errors that are unacceptable in the growing realm of compliance laws. Given harsh penalties for non-compliance, we are under considerable pressure to develop good practice recommendations for spreadsheet developers and testers. If we are to reduce errors, we need to understand errors. Fortunately, human error has been studied for over a century across a number of human cognitive domains, including linguistics, writing, software development and testing, industrial processes, automobile accidents, aircraft accidents, nuclear accidents, and algebra, to name just a few. The research that does exist is disturbing because it shows that humans are unaware of most of their errors. This “error blindness” leads people to many incorrect beliefs about error rates and about the difficulty of detecting errors. In general, they are overconfident, substantially underestimating their own error rates and overestimating their ability to reduce and detect errors. This “illusion of control” also leads them to hold incorrect beliefs about spreadsheet errors, such as a belief that most errors are due to spreadsheet technology or to sloppiness rather than being due primarily to inherent human error.
(tags: spreadsheets errors programming coding bugs research papers via:arclight)