Risk Management for Complex Calculations: EuSpRIG Best Practices in Hybrid Applications

Abstract: As the need for advanced, interactive mathematical models has increased, user/programmers are increasingly choosing the MatLab scripting language over spreadsheets. However, applications developed in these tools have high error risk, and no best practices exist. We recommend that advanced, highly mathematical applications incorporate these tools with spreadsheets into hybrid applications, where developers can apply EuSpRIG best practices. Development of hybrid applications can reduce the potential for errors, shorten development time, and enable higher level operations. We believe that hybrid applications are the future and over the course of this paper, we apply and extend spreadsheet best practices to reduce or prevent risks in hybrid Excel/MatLab applications.