A summary of my PhD thesis in not so technical language

My PhD thesis defence was held on 28th August 2015 at 12 noon at the University of Eastern Finland School of Computing in the Louhela Auditorium, Joensuu Science Park in Joensuu, Finland. The opponent was Research Fellow Sari Kujala and the custos was Professor Jorma Sajaniemi. A press release of my doctoral thesis to the Finnish media (as required by Finnish academic tradition) is at https://www.uef.fi/en/-/28-8-virheita-taulukkolaskennassa-onko-aika-muuttaa-taulukkopohjien-tekotapoja- 

The title of my PhD thesis is "Deficiencies in Spreadsheets: A Mental Model Perspective". The thesis can be downloaded at http://epublications.uef.fi/pub/urn_isbn_978-952-61-1828-4/index_en.html  Below is a summary of the thesis in not so technical language: 

Millions of people, globally, use spreadsheets in their daily work. For example, information extracted from spreadsheets is used in decision making and planning in various businesses and organizations. Spreadsheet software is ubiquitous such that almost all desktop computers have some spreadsheet software installed on them. Their easy to use interface, coupled with their powerful data manipulation capabilities, has made spreadsheets a darling to many end-users. Despite this popularity of spreadsheets, different researchers have shown that most spreadsheets have errors. Unfortunately, these errors have proven to be not trivial. For example, it is documented how some companies have lost millions of dollars due to errors in the spreadsheets they use. Research, however, has also shown that most spreadsheet errors involve construction and use of formulae.

This thesis tackled this problem of errors by studying mental models of spreadsheet creators performing various spreadsheet activities. In other words, we opted to study what spreadsheet creators think when they are doing various spreadsheet activities. We opted for this approach because it is a common assertion that humans have mental models of the systems they interact with, and as a result, it is difficult to explain many aspects of human behaviour when interacting with systems, without resorting to a construct such as mental models.

Using a constructive research approach, we conducted three empirical studies and also developed two Microsoft Excel add-ons. Spreadsheet creators are normally not professional programmers but are experts in their application domains such as accounting. However, the results of the studies showed that with traditional spreadsheets, spreadsheet creators have to link up concepts from their application domain to low-level spreadsheet concepts such as cell references in order for them explain a spreadsheet as well as to locate and fix errors in spreadsheets. Therefore, we created a Microsoft Excel add-on that translates traditional spreadsheet formulae into application domain concepts so that spreadsheet creators should map easily application domain concepts to their spreadsheet-specific counterparts. The add-on also automatically highlights all cells which are referenced in a translated spreadsheet formula. The add-on can be used for different purposes such as being used as a verification aid when creating a spreadsheet, as a comprehension aid when trying to understand a spreadsheet created by others, and as a debugging aid for locating potential errors in a spreadsheet.

The add-on was evaluated and found to be easy to learn and also helped spreadsheet creators to locate more errors in their spreadsheets. The add-on was also noted to help spreadsheet creators to think more in terms of the application domain rather than in terms of spreadsheet specific concepts. This is important as spreadsheet creators are experts in their application domains and are not necessarily professional programmers and as such they are more familiar with application domain concepts rather than low-level spreadsheet specific concepts.

We also developed another Microsoft Excel add-on (a prototype one) by extending the previously described Microsoft Excel add-on such that, instead of using cell references as in traditional spreadsheets, spreadsheet creators could now debug their spreadsheets using application domain concepts only. An evaluation of this add-on showed that it correspondingly promoted spreadsheet creators to think more in terms of their application domain such that they almost no longer thought of their spreadsheet in terms of spreadsheet-specific low-level concepts. This has the implication that we can have a spreadsheet paradigm in which spreadsheet creators develop their spreadsheets using application domain concepts only rather than labouring themselves to learn to use traditional cell references. In other words, spreadsheet creators would develop their spreadsheets in the usual ad-hoc, incremental manner but instead of using traditional cell references, they would use application domain concepts, of which they are already familiar of.

The two add-ons have been tested to run in Microsoft Excel 2003, Microsoft Excel 2007 and Microsoft Excel 2010. They can be downloaded freely at http://cs.uef.fi/spreadsheet_tools/ together with installation instructions.

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10% Internet levy in Malawi - a step backward

It never rains but pours for us, Internet users in Malawi. While grappling under one of the most expensive telecommunication tarrifs in the world, the government has decided to introduce a 10% levy on Internet, SMS and other data transfer services. In 2013, the government already introduced a 16.5% Value Added Tax (VAT) on Internet services. Apparently the Minister of Finance, in his 2015/2016 budget presentation argues that there has been a "tremendous uptake" of telecommunication services in the country hence the need to increase the tax base through this avenue to finance the zero-aid national budget from local resources. Statistics, however, show otherwise. According to a report by BuddeComm, by the end of 2014, the market penetration rates for telecom services in Malawi were 36% for mobile telephony, 1.9% for fixed telephone services and 6.1% for Internet services. It is clear that there is no tremendous uptake of telecom services in Malawi particularly for Internet services. It is thus a step backward to introduce levies that will stifle the already paltry Internet uptake in Malawi. In this post, I dwell much on how Internet access can promote trade and entrepreneurship in a country like Malawi.

Technologies like the Internet have been shown to promote trade and entrepreneurship even in developing countries as the Internet provides a platform through which manufacturers and service providers can showcase their products and services to a global audience. For example, a tourist attraction whose information has been put online is likely to attract a stream of international tourists. Companies and organizations which have an online presence clearly expose themselves to a larger market audience. This is also true for small and medium enterprises. Simply put, an online presence is a must for any progressive enterprise. Stifling Internet access through Internet levies is therefore a clear contradiction to the policy of promoting trade and entrepreneurship in the country. For further reading, a 2006 paper by Clarke & Wallsten provides insights on the linkages between trade and Internet usage.

The Internet has also provided self-employment among enterprising youths in Malawi. With the prevalent high unemployment rates in the country, some youths have taken advantage of the many opportunities provided by the Internet through businesses like website development, internet cafés, computer networking, etc. With the rising costs in Internet access, many of these businesses will be less patronized hence threatening their very existence. Where is the much touted youth empowerment then?

It is also a fact that an increasing number of Malawians are looking at the Internet as a source of vital information on education, current affairs, business, etc. For example, on the online business directory we are running, Biz Directory MW, we get not less than 100 page views per day with most traffic emanating from search engines such as Google and Bing. And 80% of all search queries come from within Malawi. This empirically demonstrates that many Malawians are increasingly using the Internet as a source of non-trivial information such as business information. Again, we can see that access to the Internet is something that should be encouraged to stimulate entrepreneurship in the country.

Other countries like Rwanda have put technology at the heart of their development strategies and the results are there for all to see. Lets build a Malawi that can escape from the shackles of poverty through progressive policies. Affordable Internet access is a need and not a want.

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Why Facebook's internet.org initiative is bad even for developing countries like Malawi

Facebook's Internet.org initiative claims to have the objective of bringing basic Internet to everyone in the world. Through this initiative, a few select websites chosen by Facebook and its partners can be accessed via mobile internet for 'free'. The initiative has just been implemented in Malawi in partnership with two of Malawi's mobile phone operators - TNM and Airtel Malawi. At face value, it looks like a great initiative. However, personally, I have reservations on the initiative based on the following reasons.

First, the initiative violates the principle of Internet or net neutrality. For starters, Internet neutrality is the principle that Internet service providers and governments should treat all data on the Internet equally, not discriminating or charging differentially by user, content, site, platform, application, type of attached equipment, or mode of communication (Wikipedia). The term was coined by Columbia University media law professor Tim Wu in 2003. Clearly, by selecting a few websites over others, Facebook and its partners are not treating all web content equally and therefore giving undue advantage to certain websites and services over others thus stifling innovation and competition. The Internet is what it is today because of innovation and competition. And if anything, this idea of filtering out some preferential websites and services over others is taking away the fundamental human right on the right to choose. Why should Facebook and its partners choose for 'poor' people what they can freely access?

Second, this initiative should not hoodwink the masses in developing countries like Malawi that it is a free service. In my opinion, this initiative gives Facebook and its partners undue advantage over others by cleverly putting themselves in a preferential basket. In other words, as more people access the Internet through this initiative, it increases Facebook's and its partners' advertising constituency. Facebook and its partners should have been honest on this other than operating on a gimmick of a charity banner.

Third, the very idea propelled that 'Internet.org by Facebook' is misleading. Internet is not Facebook and neither Facebook is Internet. The Internet should be free from any corporate control.

Fourth, what people need are affordable internet services for everyone in the world. And in this case, we are talking of affordable access to the whole of the Internet and not necessarily 'free' access to some select few websites chosen by Facebook and friends. In Malawi, Internet costs are unjustifiably very high but certainly what many want is affordable access to the whole of the Internet other than 'free' access to a select few websites whose content is not even local.

I rest my case.

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Poster Slide on "A Domain Terms Visualization Tool for Spreadsheets"

 In this poster presentation, we introduce a new spreadsheet visualization tool which was developed to demonstrate that it is possible to have an easy-to-use spreadsheet understanding and debugging tool that relieves users from spreadsheet details and lets them utilize more of their mental model of the application domain. The tool translates traditional spreadsheet formulas into problem domain narratives and highlights referenced cells.

Full poster paper can be downloaded at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/articleDetails.jsp?tp=&arnumber=6883059

The poster was presented at the 2014 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC) which was held between 28th July, 2014 to 1st August, 2014 in Melbourne, Australia.

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