Two primary concerns for construction professionals are the opacity of black-box software and the risk of AI hallucinations. Opting out of either technology is no longer realistic. Nevertheless, professionals of real standing must keep basing and defending their decisions on sound principles, hard-won experience, and verifiable results. 
Excel, when used with full visibility, lets us leverage AI and beat the hallucination curse.
Overconfidence in black boxes and AI hallucinations can lead to rare catastrophic accidents and regular construction cost escalations. India can't afford any. The antidote is sound domain experience and a third eye reporting directly to the project owner, backed by a transparent tool like Excel.
Data visualisation enables the immediate verification of data accuracy and analytical insights.
Creating XY (scatter) charts is one of the most fundamental skills in data analysis and visualisation. Microsoft Excel has supported this capability since its early versions, with charting available from the late 1980s and XY/scatter charts well-established by the early 1990s. Then it came in handy for charting pile-testing results and drawing construction workloads with the team's effectiveness using two series.
I always wished to do more with Excel, but project pressures and the software's capabilities at the time limited it to the essentials. Most of the time, these raw solutions were good enough to flag design inadequacies, identify cost savings from wasteful designs, or audit construction bills—but not polished enough to publish as a blog post or share professional experiences with the community.
With Copilot as a teammate and a free, open mind, those limitations are now gone. So I intend to revise all my previous Excel Applications, both unpublished and published in my blogs; in most cases, the problem statement remains the same or similar, but the code provisions and ambition have also evolved.
For example, looking back at my
2018 blog post on
visualising the sun, facades, and windows, I remember wishing I could truly capture the nuances of solar shading. I now realise that with modern Excel, construction professionals can execute anything they can conceive and articulate.
Coming back to XY Charting and a wish that X controls hue: violet → red, and the Y controls transparency: 50% → 100%. Both axes stay fixed at 0–100.
In the XY Charting with rainbow marker.xlsx, I created an XY Chart the way I would have in the 1990s, but told the Copilot my wish. Pronto, my wish was granted, and Copilot added a Chart Data sheet and listed my request step by step in the Chart Guide sheet. You can download the workbook, see what was done, and experiment further yourself.
Go for it if you want to revive your formula muscle and enjoy the creativity of working with Copilot. Here, I assume you are adept at using the Excel Auditing Feature.
A very relevant post for building professnals. Exel worksheets are effectively used by variety of professional. This issue of black box kind of software were, though useful but at times quite irritating. Excel coupled with copilot is great combination to unlock the immense efficiency with out any loss of trasperancy as the processes are explained in step by step pedagogical manner which can be audited for relevant formulas etc. A relevant timely post on Excel and Copilot duo to achieve staller efficiency. My best compliments.
ReplyDeleteAshutosh Pathak has turned an experiment with Excel XY charting and rainbow SVG markers into a valuable lesson in professional responsibility. For construction professionals, black-box software and AI hallucinations are genuine concerns, but withdrawing from these technologies is no longer a practical option. The wiser course is to learn how they work, test their outputs and use them without surrendering human judgement.
ReplyDeleteI have always admired teachers more than preachers, and Ashutosh is, for me, the very model of a great teacher—someone who shares the knowledge gained through experience and talent so selflessly and generously.
Professionals of real standing must continue to base—and defend—their decisions on sound principles, hard-won experience and independently verifiable results. Ashutosh’s spirit of curiosity, transparent experimentation and continuous learning shows precisely the right way forward.