FMWC

Diarmuid Early competes in Financial Modeling World Cup’s Excel Esports: All-Star Battle on May 24, 2022.

There are a lot of jobs for which it’s helpful — or even necessary — to know how to use spreadsheets. But most of those jobs do not require us to use them competitively, or while being timed, or with announcers discussing our strategies.

There are, however, tournaments where that is the case — competitors are given a problem to solve and a specific amount of time in which to solve it.

David Brown is one of those competitors. He’s an associate professor of finance in the Eller College of Management at the University of Arizona; he also competes in Excel esports and is one of the people behind the Microsoft Excel Collegiate Challenge taking place this fall. Some practice training begins next week, and the first round will be early next month.

Brown is hoping for up to 5,000 students to be involved, ranging from high school to graduate school.

The Show spoke with him to learn about the event.

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