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JustinXie | 1 month ago

The R1C1 normalization is smart. Treating 5k copied formulas as one "finding" is the only way to avoid alert fatigue.

Re: magic numbers, have you considered checking column headers as a signal? E.g., if a header contains "Rate" or "Months", a hardcoded number is likely a valid constant. If it's just "Total", * 1.2 is probably a hidden risk. How do you handle cases where the context is ambiguous?

discuss

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CherishRoby|1 month ago

Great question! I am using column headers as context signals. If a column is named 'Rate', 'Price', 'Percentage', or 'Count', I'm more lenient with constants in formulas referencing it. For ambiguous cases like 'Total', I currently flag it and let the user decide—which isn't ideal. I've been considering a confidence score system where:

High confidence whitelist: 24, 60, 7, 365 (time conversions) Context-dependent: numbers near column headers with semantic meaning Always flag: arbitrary numbers like 1.2, 847, etc. unless they're in a 'Constants' or 'Assumptions' section

The hardest edge case is something like Revenue * 0.15 where 0.15 might be a legitimate tax rate OR a hardcoded assumption that should be in a named cell. Right now I flag it as medium priority. How would you approach this?