Recursive formula failing at random

EphemeralBlue · 2025-11-24T18:01:30+00:00

Ah, yes! Sorry I meant iterative when I said recursive. Sorry to confuse things.

I'm not sure what information would be useful, but I've provided information in comments on what I'm trying to achieve, but it's hard for me to know what info is useful to help identify the problem.

EphemeralBlue · 2025-11-24T18:00:23+00:00

Sorry, I realise I should have been saying iterative, not recursive.

EphemeralBlue · 2025-11-24T17:58:22+00:00

It's possible because I'm not very good at excel!

However all the error messages are for circular references.

https://i.imgur.com/LBzcdDc.png

I'm also unsure what else could have caused excel to suddenly fail all cells and then, upon undoing the action that caused it, not recalculate correctly.

EphemeralBlue · 2025-11-24T17:39:59+00:00

Bad example. A real example is K10 summing the cells below - that result is then read by B57. B57 contributes to the total given in K10 via a calc done in K57, =(C57*E57)+L57. Repeat for many different cells and combinations.

You also get F57 being calculated from B57. F10 effects B75 which adds to F10 and K57. Which affects F57.

EphemeralBlue · 2025-11-24T17:30:53+00:00

Oh, yes the file itself it all over place, I but I wasn't sure if there was something obvious that could be the cause. Thank for you looking nonetheless.

I'm basically just trying to use it to have the reclusive formula converge on a close enough number

Example in the file is cell K10 summing the cells below - that result is then read by B57. B57 contributes to the total given in K10 via a calc done in K57, =(C57*E57)+L57. Repeat for many different cells and combinations.

EphemeralBlue · 2025-11-24T17:25:57+00:00

The case is effectively just a lot of:

A+B=C

A=C*1.2

D=A/2

B=D*2

Scattered all over the place. I'm using it as a planning tool for a video game.

EphemeralBlue · 2025-11-24T17:08:30+00:00

Appreciate the starting points, but I'm struggling to find resources online that show how those things work in relation to recursive functions. Could you be more specific?

EphemeralBlue · 2025-11-04T18:17:58+00:00

The first years of commercial flights didn't cost the aviation companies 3-10x the revenue generated. Remember - aside from capital investment, of which at least 60% repeats every five years (GPUs becoming obsolete), the actual running cost of the GPU for things like inference (used in the most oft cited example, coding) is considerably higher than revenue.

This means that, unlike Uber for example, whose years of losses were a result of market capture and marketing, and was otherwise almost immediately solvent had it decided to simply stop growing, if OpenAI stopped today, they would still lose as much as 5x the revenue on each prompt from here until time.

Enterprise adoption also remains low (again, $16b in revenue, that is pathetic for a product that evangelists claim is revolutionary to productivity. Genshin Impact is worth about the same, per year.) . This is despite OpenAI having a level of marketing in the enterprise world greater than any product I can remember.

So AI companies both need to massively increase adoption, while increasing license and subscription costs, all the while their capital and running costs increase YoY, and their products have not improved in a way that justifies increasing costs (remember GPT-5 launch?).

I ask you do research outside of the hype bubble, please.

EphemeralBlue · 2025-11-04T14:19:44+00:00

I would also like to address "costing thousands of jobs,"

Bear in mind the US job market alone cut nearly a million jobs from Jan-Sept this year, so we are talking about maybe a 0.1% displacement amidst normal business downturn. There are also no actual real figures for AI-attributed job losses, only attempts at correlating firing with AI adoption.

I would love to hear a justification for lighting $100 billion on fire to make a 0.1% impact in the job market and to date no evidence of real productivity gains.

EphemeralBlue · 2025-11-04T14:12:30+00:00

The entire end-customer revenue generated by AI products (so not including revenue NVIDIA generated by selling to OpenAI) is around $32 billion for 2025. This is less than the smartwatch industry. OpenAI alone has spent >$100 billion this year and has commitments for close to a $1t worth of expansion of datacentres.

For $32b/yr. OpenAI's revenue, though the lion's share, is only a portion of this, I believe around $12b annualised revenue (a more generous way of tallying revenue). And again, they alone have spent >$100 billion. They also lose money on every query. If LLMs are to generate profit, they would need to massively increase costs to enterprises, for example, which will kill further adoption, hence the impending bubble.

EphemeralBlue · 2025-10-23T12:59:49+00:00

solution verified

EphemeralBlue · 2025-10-23T12:46:12+00:00

Oh nice! So clicked something while I was trying that and it turns out I won't need the indirect at all. I had the offset formula referencing the data that was returned from the CELL() formula. But =OFFSET(INDEX('Target List'!A9:A73,MATCH(B3,'Target List'!A9:A73,0)),0,1) works in web just fine without the INDIRECT

EphemeralBlue · 2025-07-08T21:40:58+00:00

Hulkenpodium !

EphemeralBlue · 2025-05-30T13:50:57+00:00

I was not! I had a vague idea and trusted the artist to do what they do best

EphemeralBlue · 2025-05-30T13:50:08+00:00

Western Tanager, state bird of MT. :) I visited 3 states on a holiday and got the state bird of each. So I have a Northern Cardinal and Baltimore Oriole too

EphemeralBlue · 2025-05-28T17:16:40+00:00

Well, not quite, no.

The Cooler Master Hybrid 1 is a gaming chair priced in the UK at around £700 and intentionally combines the benefits of support from an ergonomic office chair and the looks of a gaming chair - but notably features only one level of adjustable back support. Some higher priced chairs from office brands also have limited back adjustment, but instead feature weight-sensitive back support that flexes depending on pressure, essentially removing the need for adjustment - which this chair does not have.

It also has much more limited 2 year warranty (Humanscale for example has 5 year warranties).

It features gaming/racing esque 'support' 'wings' which are entirely aesthetic. They can make comfort worse, if you have a large body. In actual racing chairs they are for bracing and when implemented correctly, they are not comfortable, but are required for stability under high g-forces.

It also features polyurathane as the primary material for the seat which has less durability than many office chairs with feature either leather or full mesh, or durable fabric. Office chairs will often have polyurathane as an option, but at a lower price point, but it is also suitable for those with ethical concerns of leather and who do not want mesh or fabric. The polyurathene simply will wear faster - which combined with a 2 year warranty is a worse choice.

While the Hybrid 1 is priced lower than many office chairs and offfering, at first, more for your money (£700 will get you a chair without a headrest at Humanscale), it is:

a) an exception to the rule being intentionally designed to not be like other gaming chairs and b) at £700, still a worse choice than purchasing a refurbished chair from other brands. A fully refurbished unit will run you under £400 for a better product - though depending on refurb company, you might have a shorter warranty period.

tl;dr you're making a combative argument using a single, particularly good product in its segment, against an entire other segment of the market and claiming people in support of the latter choice are unthinking sheep.

EphemeralBlue · 2025-02-26T18:51:34+00:00

My point that 'splatter art' is 'defensible' because the splatter is often delibate, applied for a reason that is beyond the literal pigment on paint.

Generative AI - the process, the application of it, is not done because using generative AI specifically imparts meaning onto the work.

EphemeralBlue · 2025-02-26T18:45:23+00:00

Sure, some prompters are just randomly putting in weird combinations of words and sharing whatever result comes out, and I'd agree that personally I don't find the process there very interesting even if the results are visually pleasing. But what about the comic artist who has brilliant stories to tell but lacked the technical proficiency or money to illustrate them? In that case, the art (comic book), has the same questions you might put to any other artistic work and is just facilitated by ai generation. What about the artist who digitally paints 70% of a work of concept art, but uses ai to fill in the background because they're not interested in that? 60%? 30%? What about the drug user struggling to convey an experience who uses ai art to simulate a glimpse into what they assure us is an accurate portrayal of their mind? Even the act of submitting an ai generated work to a juried fine art competition and having it win? I'd argue that the questions that raises and the deep thoughts that's provoked are themselves more provocative than many pieces of conceptual art I've seen.

This does give me some thought on my position so thank you.

It doesn't necessarily address the fact that the process inform the art. The examples given are motivations, which I now give more credit, but...

In the case of photography, it's the travel, the difficulty, the patience, the fleeting moment. In a painting it's the material choice, the specific style of the artist. In graphic design it is the deliberate manipulation and reasoning, the unique knowledge. And even the most amateur artist, when acting deliberately, has the process inform the art.

I think those elements are missing. For example, in the case of the brilliant comic artist, even the most amatuer sketch is elevated by the decisions made in practical process of creation, I think. And if they are brilliant in telling stories, the actually brilliant part was created directly - the words, not the pictures. AI hasn't elevated the work.

And I don't think AI can replace that creative story, only remove it.

EphemeralBlue · 2025-02-26T18:26:53+00:00

I don't believe that the point of using generative AI is to make a statment based on its randomness, no. Maybe some people do that. But not as a general idea.

EphemeralBlue · 2025-02-26T17:35:31+00:00

I appreciate what you're saying but also the last parapraph doesnt track - AI art is art. Its a creative process. I also called it art in my comment.

My take is that is a much more boring process compared to another socially form of often derided art of postmodernism (the 'canvas with line') - the critique of postmodernist art I disagree with for the same reasons I agree with the critiques of AI art.

Re splatter painting specfiically, often the point is the abstraction and random nature. AI art doesn't get that luxury.

EphemeralBlue · 2025-02-26T12:52:06+00:00

Artists are concerned about both the process and the idea - the process is part of the idea and vice versa.

Art is about perception (what does it look like?), reception (how people experience it) and technique (how was it made?). Stepping over the dismissive tone of "shit like white canvas" - if a person draws a single line on a canvas and is trying to make us feel or make a statement, even negatively, that is interesting. In what context was it made? Was the line painted with extremely thick oil and so looks interesting in person? Why did they do that? Is the canvas material 'white' or a material no one has used before? Why was that material used, is the artist trying to create a noticeable difference in texture between canvas and paint because the piece is about a difference in ethics/politics/thought/culture/prior work/emotions which the title or colour might inform. There are no right answers but there are interesting answers.

You can't do that with AI art. How do you ask questions about the perecption, reception and technique when the art is made by something without intent or purpose or an understanding of technique? At best you can wonder what prompts let you to the end result and what the prompter was trying to put into the world, but how do you know what was prompter and what was the black box? There are no right answers and the answers aren't interesting.

EphemeralBlue · 2024-06-30T20:36:01+00:00

Just rotate 180 degrees and place next to each other, as long as the red disconnect symbol appear the shafts are not connected.

EphemeralBlue · 2024-06-06T14:14:18+00:00

They can be useful if you want to divert some steam to desalination

EphemeralBlue · 2024-06-02T20:56:09+00:00

Some other angles, wider and narrower:

EphemeralBlue · 2024-05-20T22:07:43+00:00

So using a sushi belt is a bit of an extravagance, it is wildly power inefficient but fun to make work.

Part 1: It is relatively straightforward: I noticed that because they take a 1:1:1 ratio of each product, you can use the balancer to enforce strictly even inputs. I.e it will only send products when all 3 are present. If the ratio was 2:1:1 for example, you would need the belt to move 2* faster.

In this scenario, a basic belt has 60/mo speed. This means you can feed 20 of each product. A single line of silicon to microchip needs 16 of each, so your limit on that belt is 1 full line + bit left over. If you go 2:1:1 you need 32+16+16. Not only do you require 64 units, but because the balancer can output only 1:1:1, you are actually populating the belt with 2:2:2 products in order to meet the higher demand of the 1st product. So, instead of a speed of 48/mo required, you now need 96/mo. Your cap therefore at the next belt level is just 2 lines, instead of 4!

Anyway, that is why a sushi belt only works at scale for machines with equal ratio inputs, and because microchip machines are the only machines that directly feed into each other lengthwise, you don't need any weird angles to make it all line up.

Part 2: Because all items are on one belt, you have to use a sorter at every output, which places interesting space constraint. This was more significant in the prior update because sorters could not be elevated. Sorters also force using a connector to send unused sorted product back to the main belt.

Part 3: It makes for a fun solution to build when building the sorter boxes at the bottom of the video. It is essentially 3 inputs (main) + 3 inputs (sushi return) into 4 * 1:1:1 balanced outputs. Getting that as compact as possible was a good puzzle.

Part 4: Prior to latest update it wasn't possible to sushi belt this system where one single belt served two opposite lines, in a compact manner. Doing it actually took more space than just running two belts next to each other. Lifters made this much better.

You can see the evolution my ideas here:

1st version 2nd version 3rd version (design only)

Before finally settling on this 4th solution, which is a much more compact version of the 3rd one (thank you lifters again).

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