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Lord Finchley tried to mend the Electric Light
Himself. It struck him dead: And serve him right!
It is the business of the wealthy man
To give employment to the artisan.
Hilaire Belloc
I've always liked this little poem, and was reminded of it last week when I came across it in Bernard Levin's essay Easy as a, b, d. He discusses the presumptuousness of assuming that just because one can write a book, one can also index it. End-users are not necessarily wealthy; but perhaps a version of the poem should be composed for those who assume that just because they can write an equation, they can also spreadsheet it. One might begin with the notorious spreadsheet holding 179 "hidden" Lehman contracts which accidentally got unhidden, and thereby included in Barclays's purchase of Lehman's assets — as Debra Cassens Weiss reported on October 16th 2008 for the American Bar Association Journal: Excel Error by a Cleary Gottlieb Associate Alters Lehman Asset Deal.