Hidden AI in Spreadsheets

A calculation can be correct and still answer the wrong business question. A sales comparison can show a decline without explaining its cause. A stock estimate can look precise while depending on an order that may never repeat.

This book helps you separate the arithmetic from the meaning attached to it. Through familiar business situations, it shows how to understand what was calculated, recognise assumptions in a forecast and judge whether an explanation is supported by the records. You will know what needs checking before a number becomes a pricing, purchasing or staffing decision.

• Distinguish a generated formula, its calculated result and the explanation or recommendation attached to it.
• Recognise when missing costs, inconsistent records or misleading labels change what a correct calculation appears to show.
• Understand the difference between describing a trend, explaining its cause and estimating what may happen next.
• See what a shared table, chart or summary can reveal and why its sources and assumptions need to remain clear to later readers.

The precision of a number can make everything around it appear equally reliable. Yet the calculation, the description of its result and the suggested response are separate matters. Correct subtraction does not prove that all costs were entered and an accurate sales comparison does not prove why sales changed.

People can also overlook what a shared result reveals. A summary of job margins can disclose sensitive information even when the underlying cost records remain private. Once an answer is placed in a workbook, later readers may not see the request or assumptions behind it. A figure headed “stock required” may then look like a settled requirement when it was only an estimate assuming that a one-off order repeats.

Extract from Hidden AI in Spreadsheets, “What people miss when they just trust AI”.

Russell Parrott is a plain-English writer exploring hidden AI in everyday business tools. He investigates what AI does, what information it draws on and what it can recommend, communicate or change as a result.

He finds where AI is operating inside the tools a business already uses and explains what information it can use and what it recommends, communicate or change as a result. His books turn that research into independent plain-English explanations.