Editing Talk:1667: Algorithms

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My organization has used Excel as a scheduling tool for at least 10 years. Management was using paper and an enterprising employee with a penchant for Excel decided to kick them into the computer age. Each hour of each day of a 24/7 operation is tracked, including which of 13 task positions is being worked by which employee. But it must contain room for other than regularly scheduled employees as well as future additions. And each Workbook covers 2 weeks at a stretch. All information must come together to generate several reports. So... 13 positions x a theoretical 100 employees = 1300 cells. Times 14 days = 18,200 cells. And each cell has a background formula to calculate from each hour of each 24 hr. day...formulas with 95 nested COUNTIFs. So there are 1,729,000 COUNTIF calculations running in the background and spitting out results on a bar chart and two totals reports. And this does not include the formulas running behind each daily sheet to provide staffing numbers for each hour around the clock. It has been an absolute beast to manage. I just recently finished overhauling the whole thing, improving appearance and organization, locking areas of each sheet to minimize formula corruption, and implementing conditional formatting to further reduce the need for the user input (half a dozen supervisory personnel, some of whom can recognize a computer when they see one) that has caused so much grief. But in the end there was no getting around the enormous formulas running in the background. Excel is NOT the right tool for this job. But we have been unable to determine a replacement. [[User:LostButMakingGoodTime|LostButMakingGoodTime]] ([[User talk:LostButMakingGoodTime|talk]]) 17:52, 1 July 2018 (UTC)
 
My organization has used Excel as a scheduling tool for at least 10 years. Management was using paper and an enterprising employee with a penchant for Excel decided to kick them into the computer age. Each hour of each day of a 24/7 operation is tracked, including which of 13 task positions is being worked by which employee. But it must contain room for other than regularly scheduled employees as well as future additions. And each Workbook covers 2 weeks at a stretch. All information must come together to generate several reports. So... 13 positions x a theoretical 100 employees = 1300 cells. Times 14 days = 18,200 cells. And each cell has a background formula to calculate from each hour of each 24 hr. day...formulas with 95 nested COUNTIFs. So there are 1,729,000 COUNTIF calculations running in the background and spitting out results on a bar chart and two totals reports. And this does not include the formulas running behind each daily sheet to provide staffing numbers for each hour around the clock. It has been an absolute beast to manage. I just recently finished overhauling the whole thing, improving appearance and organization, locking areas of each sheet to minimize formula corruption, and implementing conditional formatting to further reduce the need for the user input (half a dozen supervisory personnel, some of whom can recognize a computer when they see one) that has caused so much grief. But in the end there was no getting around the enormous formulas running in the background. Excel is NOT the right tool for this job. But we have been unable to determine a replacement. [[User:LostButMakingGoodTime|LostButMakingGoodTime]] ([[User talk:LostButMakingGoodTime|talk]]) 17:52, 1 July 2018 (UTC)
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Why is 'schism' probably referring to the East-West Schism? There have been dozens of schisms for all sorts of reasons, from Arianism and Miaphysitism to recent splits in the Mormon Church and various other young denominations. The comic could (theoretically) be referring to any one of these schisms, or (more likely, in my view) it could be referring to the concept of a schism in general. Personally I think it's most likely a parody of modern church splits over outwardly petty-looking, seemingly trivial, or apparently overly worldly reasons. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.90.228|172.70.90.228]] 03:03, 20 September 2023 (UTC)
 

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