A. Spreadsheets are sometimes credited with legitimizing the personal computer a
ID: 3672934 • Letter: A
Question
A. Spreadsheets are sometimes credited with legitimizing the personal computer as a business tool. Why do you think they had such an impact?
B. Computer models and simulations have been blamed for some of the most serious financial disasters of the last decade. What do you think?
C. Share how you would use a database to maintain information about your customers. Specifically, define your customer table in terms of what fields you would want it to contain. Describe the data type of each field. Share with your classmates a couple of queries that you may want to ask of your database.
Explanation / Answer
Please find the answers below :
1)
Spreadsheets have a much impact in business world because of these main features and factors:
One of the key factors is its low technical requirement. The spreadsheet does not require a complex installation and deployment procedure or expertise in SQL/MDX/Java script/.Net, let alone a great many of advisory agents and technical experts to give you command. The spreadsheet is so simple and easy to learn.
Being intuitive, free, and flexible are also factors. Simple actions like query, filtering, grouping, sorting, formula composing, and judging are the routine work common and understandable to everyone. The free combination of these operations can bring about numerous algorithms. However, the non-spreadsheet BI tools are all hard to understand, and restrictive to your innovative ideas. Just to name a few, you can only calculate in the model of the respective BI tool and must have an idea of the rotation of dimensions.
Most importantly, the spreadsheet is business-personnel-oriented. What is the purpose of BI? BI is aimed to enhance enterprise competiveness through business computing. This objective requires the business personnel to carry out the analysis from the business perspective when confronting to the business opportunities and risks. However, the non-spreadsheet BI tools are designed for IT experts. They may know the SQL and linear regression, and are able to solve 20% of BI problems, but they may not necessarily know the business.
2)
Computer models and simulations have some major drawbacks regardless of its advantages, this has become the root cause for its financial disasters. The main drwabacks are :
We have a poor understanding of how some physical systems work so that we do not have sufficient data to produce a mathematical model. For this reason it has not been possible to create simulations that can accurately predict the occurrence and effects of earthquakes and tsunami.
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The formula and functions that are used may not provide an accurate description of the system resulting in inaccurate output from the simulation.
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Complex simulations can require the use of a computer system with a fast processor and large amounts of memory.
3)
Pleas find below a sample CUSTOMER table model :
Queries :
- select CustName from customers where city like "CA%";
This is to get all customers names in the city starting with CA