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ModelOff 2015: Proud to be a spreadsheet geek

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10th Dec 2015
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Simon Hurst reports from the ModelOff spreadsheet competition and award ceremony. The event demonstrated just how important spreadsheets are to modern life.

I was lucky enough to be invited to the ‘Global Training Camp’ for this year’s ModelOff competition. If you are not familiar with ModelOff, it is the world championship for financial modellers. The Global Training Camp (GTC) is an associated event that brought together a range of Excel experts at Microsoft’s London Victoria Street office for a two day event that included the ModelOff 2015 awards ceremony.

There was much about the GTC that reinforced the stereotype of Excel fanatics as being other-worldly geeks. Part of the awards ceremony involved the 16 finalists, split into four teams, taking part in a live 25 minute spreadsheet challenge to turn multiple tables of raw data into a meaningful dashboard. Hands flashed across keyboards in unison like some extreme 16 person piano recital, with all of the action being displayed live to the attendees on big screens. At times it was like something from The Matrix with figures appearing and moving around at breath-taking speed. That would seem daunting enough, but the audience were also invited to get up and examine the competitors’ progress close up.

If you want to gain some idea of what the competition involves and how difficult or otherwise it is, the ModelOff site includes extensive details as well as former questions for you to test yourself with. Most of the questions come complete with the answers so you can check to see how well you did.

For those of us older than Excel itself, there is some encouragement in the age of this year’s champion. Joseph Lau is 43 and was the oldest of the 16 finalists. The finalists’ ages ranged from 23 to 43 with the average age being just under 31. The finalists came from 10 different countries, demonstrating how international the competition is.

Given the emphasis on financial modelling, it was not surprising that the live challenge was based on an analysis of share prices and that that most of the ModelOff finalists came from the world of corporate finance and investment banking. However, outside of the frenetic atmosphere of the awards ceremony itself, many of the presentations and discussions spread over the two days showed just how important the spreadsheet can be to life as we know it.

The two days were designed to provide training, discussion and information across three different streams: Investment Analysis, Corporate Finance and Microsoft Excel Development. Several Microsoft Excel product experts were on hand to deliver sessions, answer questions and discuss issues. Out of the many hours of presentations and interactive sessions, a couple of examples help demonstrate not only the power of Excel, but also how it affects all of our lives.

John Campbell, a Microsoft Principal Program Manager, gave the opening keynote speech on the subject of 30 years of Excel (Excel version 1.0 was launched in May 1985). He started by demonstrating how pervasive spreadsheets had become in all our lives, providing evidence for the use of Excel by NASA, the US government and the US military. However, it was a very different use of Excel that he chose to illustrate his point in detail. He related the example of a doctor who had developed a tool designed to improve the diagnosis of skin cancer. Using Excel’s data analysis tools, including PivotTables and PivotCharts, some key measurements of skin cancers, such as the radius of the affected area, were compared against historical data to establish correlations between the measurements and whether the cancer turned out to be benign or malignant. This provided the evidence to create an algorithm to predict the probability of a suspected cancer being malignant. The algorithm was turned into an Excel User-Defined function which was then made generally accessible as a web service. Doctors in the field were then able to enter the 10 measurements into a spreadsheet in order to calculate an informed malignancy probability prediction.

It is back to the awards ceremony for the other example of the power of Excel. Predictably enough, as hosts and sponsors, Microsoft took the opportunity to showcase some of the recent and imminent changes to Excel. The theme, in common with nearly all the Microsoft sessions over the two days, was the new data tools such as the series of ‘Power’ Add-Ins and the new Power BI application. The presentation during the awards ceremony included a video featuring the former Guardian journalist David McCandless. McCandless showed how crucial the data tools were to his investigative work, enabling him to research and analyse date to identify important issues, often buried deeply in a mass of seemingly meaningless raw figures and text. Excel’s visualisation and presentation tools then allowed him to turn his insights into compelling images that helped ‘sell’ the story to his editor and then generated the impact and understanding for the readers. He now works as ‘an independent data journalist’.

It would be easy to think that an elite spreadsheet competition has little to do with the uses of Excel that most of us are more familiar with, let alone saving the world in general. 16 corporate bankers with exceptional Excel skills, competing for notoriety and a significant cash prize (£10,000 for the winner) may not seem the most likely way to ensure that spreadsheets make a more positive contribution to the future of the world. This would be to underestimate the power and the potential of ModelOff. By showcasing Excel skills and demonstrating just how great the gap is between using a spreadsheet and using a spreadsheet well, ModelOff could do much to generate a greater appreciation of just how important spreadsheet skills are.

The competition may be dominated by the finance industry, but many of the techniques used, and the innovative solutions discovered, are also relevant to situations that affect us all: from the planning of US Air Force bombing runs to the early identification of a malignant skin cancer. The data tools that Excel now puts into the hands of each of us can help identify vital business issues, however large or small our business, and inform the decisions and actions that are required to address those issues. These same tools can also give individuals the power to hold organisations and governments to account for their actions and to present their conclusions in compelling ways.

Underestimate the importance and power of the spreadsheet at your peril.

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By redboam
13th Dec 2015 18:30

Ignore at your peril?

Where modelling calls for forecasting profits, liquidity and cash flow we simply use figurewizard these days, then export the results to excel. Simple and no need for geeks.

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Replying to tom123:
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By cryptic444
08th Feb 2016 17:43

Do you have no shame?

Why would I spend money to do something that is so easy in excel!

Stop advertising a site that on the pricing page can't tell the difference between inc. VAT and ex. VAT!

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