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Re: Thoughts on "Love Your Database"

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Hello,

(sorry for delay, I've been traveling)

Le 04/05/2016 17:08, John McKown a écrit :
...
        ​Allowing PHBs direct access t​o company data is a nasty thing.

    Sorry, what is a PHB?  Our friend google didn't help me much on this
    matter.

​Ah. Sorry. PHB is a "Pointy Haired Boss" and is a reference to the
comic "Dilbert". Dilbert is a engineer who works for a boss who is a
complete idiot & has his hair moussed up at the sides (I guess it is
moussed).

Le 04/05/2016 17:05, Steve Crawford a écrit :
Perhaps a bit US centric but PHB = Pointy Haired Boss. See the boss in
"Dilbert".

Alright, got it, thanks.
I admire Dilbert; I've had bosses like PHB...


...
    Hm.  Sounds familiar...
    I usually call "excelitis" a sort of mental disease related to a use
    and abuse of Excel, up to the point where one cannot imagine data
    which is *not* in a table-like array.  And they think that they do
    Relational Database Management...  In the 1990's, I met many-many
    deeply sick persons.  I had been infected for a while, I must confess.

​Yes, I keep reading in another forum about how to interface the R
language so that the users can continue to input data into Excel, but
then have it run a R language script to produce some output. So many
there are trying to use Excel as their "user interface" because it is
just about all the user knows.

Well, that could be a good way to pull them out of excel: once they will realize that there is no way that they can do what R does with macros and formulas (yes, they will try hard to get rid of R, I'm sure...), it may open up their mind and consider other ways of looking at data than mere two-dimensional tables...



I had a manager, long ago, who used a Lotus 1-2-3​ spreadsheet to contain
all his memos. I was glassy eyed in disbelief.

Well... I did use 1-2-3 as a sort-of database (I was young... bad excuse). And also, I had used Excel to produce final reports, with plenty of graphics, I used the vector editing tools a lot to make fancy figures...
Hm.  Long time ago.


He also would use his hand calculator to add up the numbers
in the spreadsheet to be sure that the summation function in the
spreadsheet didn't make a mistake. <shudder/>

Uh-oh. This is worrying. But it makes me think of a famous excel bug, where you had something like 1 - 1 = 2... Maybe your boss was actually very wise (and paranoid)?...

À+
Pierre
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