Month: February 2023

A Corgi-sized meteor as heavy as 4 baby elephants hit Texas, eh? Is energy equivalent the same as weight? Are animal meteors meatier? So many questions …

In this BBC podcast, stand-up mathematician Matt Parker explains the latest big spreadsheet screwup: overstating European productivity growth.

There are a bunch of killers in spreadsheets, but in this case the culprit was lack of a time axis concept, making it easy to misalign times for the GDP and labor variables. The interesting thing is that a spreadsheet’s strong suite – visibility of the numbers – didn’t help. Someone should have seen 22% productivity growth and thought, “that’s bonkers” – but perhaps expectations of a COVID19 rebound short-circuited the mental reality check.