[niggler]

> where you are trying to catch the difference between SUM(A3:A12) and SUM(A3:A10) in a thousand different cells.

Excel does a pretty good job in highlighting which cells are selected when you edit a formula, and it does a pretty good job of maintaining the meaning of the formula under sheet transformations. For example, if you inserted a row between rows 8 and 9 then the two formulae would be =SUM(A3:A13) and =SUM(A3:A11) respectively.

This may have been a genuine error, but the two researchers definitely started the process with a goal in mind, and when the results agreed with their goals they didn't bother to check.

[yummyfajitas]

This may have been a genuine error, but the two researchers definitely started the process with a goal in mind...

What would that goal be? According to Megan Mcardle, Rogoff was a mild proponent of stimulus. For example, he said this in 2012:

"Back in 2008-9, there was a reasonable chance, maybe 20% that we’d end up in another Great Depression. Spending a trillion dollars is nothing to knock that off the table."

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/04/17/did-reinhar...

[klodolph]

Yes, it does highlight the cells. But if a mistake does somehow make it in, it is still exceptionally tedious to find the error. It is easy enough to expand a formula for additional cells but accidentally miss a cell, leaving it with the old formula. If you were using SQL, R, or Python, this class of error would never happen.

[flatfilefan]

I guess it is just that to do a proper audit you need to have your logic on one page. Otherwise it is extreemly hard to follow the code. In excel every formula is sitting essentially on it's own page. It is easy to code this way but hard to audit.

[niggler]

Recent versions of excel do warn you if formulas omit adjacent cells. I agree with your sentiment to some extent but with excel 2011/2013 you have to actively suppress these warnings.