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Comment by sdf2erf

4 hours ago

"The non-deterministic part is turning human instructions ("calculate the NPV over 10 years for X given Y") into Excel."

erm theres an NPV function built in excel.

> erm theres an NPV function built in excel.

Exactly!

The LLM just needs to make sure it uses it appropriately. Doing that bit is the non-deterministic part, but the NPV calculation itself is completely deterministic.

  • Youre not quite getting it, are you.

    • When you setup a spreadsheet, you choose a column or cell to show the NPV. You use the npv formula on this cell and apply it to inputs from other columns or cells.

      This process of deciding what data to put in what column and how to apply NPV to it is non-deterministic. You could choose to put it in column A, or column B or maybe even row 3 - it depends!

      The LLM does that part non-deterministically.

    • Do you really think you come off as a good person posting things like this? This place is to satisfy intellectual curiosity, not to lord your supposed intelligence over others, without even proving it exists in the first place.

But humans non-deterministically use that or use a hand-rolled formula.

  • Humans dont enter numbers non-determinstically. WTF are you on about lmao.

    Have you ever done anything related to corp finance/valuation in a professional setting? Highly doubt it.