“We use a circular reference in Excel to do linear regression.”
My mind was blown. I had thought, naively perhaps, that circular references in Excel simply created an error. But this data scientist showed me that Excel doesn’t error on circular references—if the computed value of the cell converges.
You see, when formulas create a circular reference, Excel will run that computation up to a number of times. If, in those computations, the magnitude of the difference between the most recent and previous computed values for the cell falls below some pre-defined epsilon value (usually a very small number, like 0.00001), Excel will stop recomputing the cell and pretend like it finished successfully.
Yeah, really.
my dad fr just said “happy joshing” to me when he was bidding me goodnight. i asked him what he meant. he said “fantasizing about josh hutcherson i dunno” and i was WHEEZING