Financial Modeling World Cup
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Saw some articles late last week and over the weekend describing YouTube livestreams of Excel pros competing in a Financial Modeling World Championship "esports" competition. I'm vaguely aware that some YouTubers are making millions of $$ livestreaming their online gaming endeavors, but have no sense what the entertainment value there would be. However, I spent years working in Excel for financial institutions, building models both simple and complex, and was baffled by the idea that somebody would willingly spend upwards of 90 minutes to watch Excel experts competing on these models. OK, so thinking that maybe you might learn something by watching, I invested about 15 minutes to watch a portion of one of the videos. [^]FMWC Open - Dec 8 (America Session) - Excel as esports - YouTube[^] Initial suspicions were confirmed. The views of competitors' screens are small, you can't really see well what they're doing, you have little chance to tease out any single person's approach or logic, and they move from cell to cell so quickly that you can't even begin to see the formulas they've used. Additionally, in the portion I saw, they had 3 "experts" in small windows at 3 corners of the screen commenting on what "current" competitor was doing - that competitor appearing in the 4th corner of the screen. They have links below the video to the various challenges on the FMWC web site, but if you want to see completed Excel models, it'll cost you $10 US EACH to download the files. Am I wrong to think Excel as an esport is bizarre?
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Saw some articles late last week and over the weekend describing YouTube livestreams of Excel pros competing in a Financial Modeling World Championship "esports" competition. I'm vaguely aware that some YouTubers are making millions of $$ livestreaming their online gaming endeavors, but have no sense what the entertainment value there would be. However, I spent years working in Excel for financial institutions, building models both simple and complex, and was baffled by the idea that somebody would willingly spend upwards of 90 minutes to watch Excel experts competing on these models. OK, so thinking that maybe you might learn something by watching, I invested about 15 minutes to watch a portion of one of the videos. [^]FMWC Open - Dec 8 (America Session) - Excel as esports - YouTube[^] Initial suspicions were confirmed. The views of competitors' screens are small, you can't really see well what they're doing, you have little chance to tease out any single person's approach or logic, and they move from cell to cell so quickly that you can't even begin to see the formulas they've used. Additionally, in the portion I saw, they had 3 "experts" in small windows at 3 corners of the screen commenting on what "current" competitor was doing - that competitor appearing in the 4th corner of the screen. They have links below the video to the various challenges on the FMWC web site, but if you want to see completed Excel models, it'll cost you $10 US EACH to download the files. Am I wrong to think Excel as an esport is bizarre?
Duke Carey wrote:
Am I wrong to think Excel as an esport is bizarre?
No.
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony "Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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Saw some articles late last week and over the weekend describing YouTube livestreams of Excel pros competing in a Financial Modeling World Championship "esports" competition. I'm vaguely aware that some YouTubers are making millions of $$ livestreaming their online gaming endeavors, but have no sense what the entertainment value there would be. However, I spent years working in Excel for financial institutions, building models both simple and complex, and was baffled by the idea that somebody would willingly spend upwards of 90 minutes to watch Excel experts competing on these models. OK, so thinking that maybe you might learn something by watching, I invested about 15 minutes to watch a portion of one of the videos. [^]FMWC Open - Dec 8 (America Session) - Excel as esports - YouTube[^] Initial suspicions were confirmed. The views of competitors' screens are small, you can't really see well what they're doing, you have little chance to tease out any single person's approach or logic, and they move from cell to cell so quickly that you can't even begin to see the formulas they've used. Additionally, in the portion I saw, they had 3 "experts" in small windows at 3 corners of the screen commenting on what "current" competitor was doing - that competitor appearing in the 4th corner of the screen. They have links below the video to the various challenges on the FMWC web site, but if you want to see completed Excel models, it'll cost you $10 US EACH to download the files. Am I wrong to think Excel as an esport is bizarre?
Nothing beats the Nebraska church ladies scheduling system. [xkcd: Algorithms](https://xkcd.com/1667/)
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Nothing beats the Nebraska church ladies scheduling system. [xkcd: Algorithms](https://xkcd.com/1667/)
Been there, done that. Back in the MS-DOS days, Lotus created an office suite called Symphony[^]. One of our customers at the time wanted us to aggregate information from their existing data acquisition system into a single spreadsheet. They had dozens of separate sheets, none of which updated consistently. First we reworked the original sheets to improve their consistency. Next we created an overlay system using macros that loaded an unloaded the individual sheets as needed, and added a menu system on top of that to manage the whole mess. Probably the worst obscenity I've ever built in my career. :~
Software Zen:
delete this; -
Been there, done that. Back in the MS-DOS days, Lotus created an office suite called Symphony[^]. One of our customers at the time wanted us to aggregate information from their existing data acquisition system into a single spreadsheet. They had dozens of separate sheets, none of which updated consistently. First we reworked the original sheets to improve their consistency. Next we created an overlay system using macros that loaded an unloaded the individual sheets as needed, and added a menu system on top of that to manage the whole mess. Probably the worst obscenity I've ever built in my career. :~
Software Zen:
delete this;I once spent a few months building up a financial model for a car importer in Oz, excel dragging in data from various systems (mini, PC and banking services). After 3 months I apologised as I could not get it closer than $1m to the target - manager was delighted no one else had got closer than $10m. Excel took 9 hours to recalc the sheets.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity - RAH I'm old. I know stuff - JSOP
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I once spent a few months building up a financial model for a car importer in Oz, excel dragging in data from various systems (mini, PC and banking services). After 3 months I apologised as I could not get it closer than $1m to the target - manager was delighted no one else had got closer than $10m. Excel took 9 hours to recalc the sheets.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity - RAH I'm old. I know stuff - JSOP
9... hours... Good grief.
Software Zen:
delete this;
