Spreadsheet mistakes - news stories

c reports of spreadsheet errors have been sought out on

ehalf of EuSpRIG by Patrick O’Beirne of Systems
elling for many years. There are very many reports of
adsheet related errors and they seem to appear in the
global media at a fairly consistent rate.

stories illustrate common problems that occur with the

trolled use of spreadsheets. In many cases, we identify
area of risk involved and then say how we think the
problem might have been avoided.

s are identified by those who kindly collated and sorted

them:

POB: Patrick O’Beirne, Eusprig chair

elienne Hermans (winner of the 2011 David Chadwick

udent prize and now an assistant professor at Delft
University of Technology).

NS: Tie Cheng, a EuSpRIG committee member.

PC: Mary Pat Campbell, an actuary, trainer, and a

member of the EuSpRIG Yahoo Group.

Identifier: POB1801
Title: Drinks company £5.2M spreadsheet arithmetic error
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/mar/21/bargain-booze-owner-
Source:
conviviality-must-raise-125m-to-halt-bankruptcy
Release Date: 21 March 2018
Risk: Bankruptcy after financial mismanagement
Discrepancy: £5.2M

At first the retailer said profits would be 20% lower than the £70m expected by the City, with £5.2m of th
£14m hole that had opened up in its forecast down to a spreadsheet error, while the remainder was a reflec
of weakening profit margins. On 21 March the Guardian (UK) reported “Firm issues third profits warning
says it will meet investors to raise funds via a share placing. The company, in a stock exchange
announcement, said it was holding meetings with investors to raise £125m via a share placing that would
it pay a £30m tax bill due at the end of the month, fund overdue payments to creditors and repay a £30m
loan.The company blamed the first shock profit warning on a spreadsheet arithmetic error made by a mem
of its finance team and weakening profit margins, and then admitted it had not budgeted for the £30m tax
due this month.”
Identifier: POB1706
Title: Eskom made R1.5bn spreadsheet error in Optimum fine
https://www.fin24.com/Economy/Eskom/live-statecapture-ex-finance-
Source:
director-at-eskom-tsholofelo-molefe-testifies-20171108
Release Date: 08 Nov 2017
Risk: Reputation loss
Discrepancy: € 100 million

The original fine had been R2.2bn (which saw the firm go into business rescue), but when Daniels met wi
committee to discuss this, they discovered there had been an error in the spreadsheet.

“I was shocked at the answer,” she said. “There was an error in the spreadsheet. At that point, I was beyon
furious. We have gone out in the media to say it was R2.2bn.”

“The final analysis of the claim showed the fine should have been R722m. I was quite pleased to hear Mr
Marsden (Optimum business rescue practitioner) estimated it to be around R700m.”

Identifier: POB1705
Title: SLO County budget surplus now a deficit after 'human error'
http://www.ksby.com/story/36685143/slo-county-budget-surplus-now-
Source:
deficit-after-human-error
Release Date: Oct 26, 2017
Risk: Reputation
Discrepancy: $8 Million

"It's common, it's human, everyone does that. I'm glad I'm not responsible for it though," said Bobby Gallo
San Luis Obispo resident.

The county says recently approved salary increases were "inadvertently omitted in the calculations."
Basically, someone forgot to include those numbers in the spreadsheet.

Identifier: POB1704
Title: Risks of using a spreadsheet for election calculation
Source: Malaysia news
Release Date: July 2017
Risk: Mistake or fraud?
Discrepancy: Voting
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/beritamalaysia/conversations/topics/125608

"As a result of an error in the Excel spreadsheet, the votes for Candidates number 31 to 38 were exactly th
same as those of Candidates number 61 to 68. This can be observed from the table below:"

http://www.malaysia-today.net/karpal-tried-to-cover-up-the-fraudulent-dap-party-election/

"They needed a Malay face so they switched Vincent Wu with Zairil and blamed it on Excel. Karpal,
however, knew that it was not a computer glitch but vote rigging. "

Identifier: POB1703
Title: Emailed spreadsheet contained private data in ‘hidden’ columns
Source: https://www.theregister.co.uk
Release Date: 22 Feb, 2017
Risk: Data leakage
Discrepancy: unknown

Blundering Boeing bod blabbed spreadsheet of 36,000 coworkers' personal details in email.

Global aerospace firm Boeing earlier this month sent a notification to Washington State Attorney General
Bob Ferguson, as required by law, about a company employee who mistakenly emailed a spreadsheet full
of employee personal data to his spouse in November, 2016.

The spreadsheet, sent to provide the employee's spouse with a formatting template, contained the personal
information of roughly 36,000 other Boeing employees, including Social Security numbers and dates of
birth, in hidden columns. Some 7,288 of the affected employees resided in Washington State.

Identifier: POB1702
Title: Spreadsheet errors cost Clallam $494,157
http://www.peninsuladailynews.com/news/spreadsheet-errors-cost-
Source:
clallam-494157/
Release Date: 17 Feb, 2017
Risk: Financial loss
Discrepancy: $494,157

A $331,074 Excel spreadsheet calculation error was made on a sheriff’s operations salary worksheet durin
the annual budget cycle last fall, commissioners learned Monday. A $163,083 spreadsheet error was made
a sheriff’s jail salary worksheet, officials said. “We did some forensics,” Benedict said Wednesday. “The
spreadsheets were emailed back and forth between us and [County Administrator] Jim Jones’ office. Beca
of some cutting and pasting, not all the formulas were pasted correctly. It was an unintended error.”
Identifier: POB1701
Title: Unofficial spreadsheets land Italian pharma plant with regulatory warning
http://www.in-pharmatechnologist.com/Regulatory-Safety/Shredded-data-
Source:
unofficial-spreadsheets-land-Italian-plant-with-warning
Release Date: 31 Jan, 2017
Risk: Uncontrolled electronic spreadsheet
Discrepancy: Regulatory sanction

Data integrity issues have landed Italian drugmaker FACTA Farmaceutici with a US FDA warning letter.

The letter published today was sent to the firm earlier this month following an inspection at the manufactu
facility in San Nicolo a Tordino, Teramo in January 2016. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
observed a number of GMP violations at the plant, including discrepancies in data surrounding multiple
sterile drug product lots.

http://www.fda.gov/ICECI/EnforcementActions/WarningLetters/2017/ucm538068.htm

“You stored original data in an ‘unofficial’ and uncontrolled electronic spreadsheet on a shared computer
network drive,” the Agency said. “Your analyst stated that original data was first recorded in this ‘unoffici
spreadsheet and transcribed later to an ‘official’ form. This spreadsheet showed failing results above the
limits you established in your procedure, PCH 035 Visible Particle Determination in use prior to Septemb
2014.”

Search FDA for 'spreadsheet' to find other relevant documents.

Identifier: POB1607
Title: Wisconsin presidential recount will cost $3.9 million
http://www.wrn.com/2016/11/wisconsin-presidential-recount-will-cost-
Source:
3-5-million/
Release Date: 28 Nov, 2016
Risk: Loss of financial control
Discrepancy: $400,000

The Wisconsin Elections Commission announced Tuesday afternoon that a spreadsheet error caused them
incorrectly calculate the total cost of the recount. The revised cost estimate has climbed from $3.5 million
$3.9 million.

Identifier: POB1606
Title: SolarCity adviser Lazard made mistake in Tesla deal analysist
Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-solarcity-lazard-idUSKCN11635K
Release Date: Sep 1, 2016
Risk: Loss of reputation for advisors
Discrepancy: $400 million

Lazard Ltd (LAZ.N), the investment bank that advised SolarCity Corp (SCTY.O) on its $2.6 billion sale t
Tesla Motors Inc (TSLA.O), made an error in its analysis that discounted the value of the U.S. solar energ
company by $400 million, a regulatory filing by Tesla showed on Wednesday. This was the result of a
computational error "in certain SolarCity spreadsheets setting forth SolarCity’s financial information that
Lazard used in its discounted cash flow valuation analyses," according to the filing.

Identifier: POB1605
Title: Gene name errors are widespread in the scientific literature
http://genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13059-016-
Source:
1044-7
Release Date: 23 August 2016
Risk: Misinterpretation of scientific data

“Gene name errors are widespread in the scientific literature.” Mark Ziemann, YotamEren and Assam El-
OstaEmail author Genome Biology201617:177 DOI: 10.1186/s13059-016-1044-7© The Author(s). 2016

They provide their data sources. They wrote scripts to trawl through published papers on genetics which h
data files attached, and checked those files for data errors. They screened 35,175 supplementary Excel file
and confirmed gene name errors in 987 supplementary files from 704 published articles in 18 journals.
Linear-regression estimates show gene name errors in supplementary files have increased at an annual rate
15 % over the past five years, outpacing the increase in published papers (3.8 % per year). “In conclusion,
show that inadvertent gene name conversion errors persist in the scientific literature, but these should be e
to avoid if researchers, reviewers, editorial staff and database curators remain vigilant.”

The root problem is that the researchers who uploaded those files NEVER checked them.

There is a paper about the problem from 2004 which also shows the problem with Gene names being turne
into dates. See https://bmcbioinformatics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2105-5-80 . So 12 yea
after the paper was published people geneticists still have not learned how to solve the problem.

Identifier: POB1604
Title: M&S results hit by spreadsheet mishap
https://www.accountingweb.co.uk/tech/excel/ms-results-hit-by-
Source:
spreadsheet-mishap
Release Date: 15 July, 2016
Risk: Loss of reputation. restatement
Marks & Spencer chief financial officer Helen Weir told the Financial Times last week she was shocked a
discovering that a spreadsheet summing error forced the retailer to issue a correction to its quarterly tradin
statement. The original statement issued at 7am reported group sales had grown 1.3%. But at 1:31pm a
correction was released showing that group sales had in fact fallen 0.4%.

Identifier: POB1603
Title: Blackpool Teaching Hospitals fined by Data Protection Commissioner
https://ico.org.uk/media/action-weve-taken/mpns/1624118/blackpool-nhs-
Source:
trust-monetary-penalty-notice.pdf
Release Date: 28 April 2016
Risk: Penalty £185,000

The Information Commissioner has imposed a penalty of £185,000 on Blackpool Teaching Hospitals NHS
trust, who posted spreadsheets summarising their equal opportunities performance on-line. The WHOLE o
each spreadsheet was posted, including the pivot tables containing sensitive personal information about ev
employee. These were on line for 10 months before anyone noticed, despite the Commissioner penalising
other trusts for similar disclosures, and blogging to highlight the risks. No checks were made before
uploading, “nobody knew that Excel could do things like that”

Identifier: POB1602
Title: Calculation errors in the Babylonian tablet Plimpton 322
http://www.math.ubc.ca/~cass/courses/m446-
Source:
03/pl322/pl322.html#errors
Release Date: 1800 BC
Risk: Unknown

This is alleged to be the oldest “spreadsheet” error in the world. There are older tables of numbers, such as
ruled papyrus from 4000 BC, but no mention of errors in that one!
https://theodox.quora.com/The-worlds-oldest-spreadsheet

Identifier: POB1601
Title: BlackEnergy .XLS Dropper
Source: http://blog.didierstevens.com/2016/01/07/blackenergy-xls-dropper/
Release Date: 7 Jan, 2016
Risk: Shutdown of power plants

Didier Stevens : “Analysing Malicious Documents“.

“I analyzed the spreadsheet (97b7577d13cf5e3bf39cbe6d3f0a7732) used in the recent BlackEnergy attack
against Ukrainian news media and electric industry.”
(For more on Office vulnerabilities, follow www.Decalage.info )

Identifier: POB1507
Title: Spreadsheet error overstated oil production from Fort Berthold Reservation
http://bismarcktribune.com/bakken/spreadsheet-error-overstated-oil-
Source: production-from-fort-berthold-reservation/article_ff7d4887-8085-5ca1-8963-
01652bcceef7.html
Release Date: Dec 16, 2015
Risk: Loss of credibility