There are cases where it is useful. Like I want to retrieve the FX rate for a given day but my time series might be missing days, so finding the nearest result is practical.
Also the default assumes that the values are in ascending order, which is computationally efficient as it can do a binary search.
But very dangerous in the most common scenario.
What would be even better is to be able to tell Excel to create a hash table / dictionary in memory from a table so that it can be queried very efficiently.
But as I posted everywhere on this page, Microsoft doesn't seem to be minded to add new features. Changing the color scheme between versions, making minor improvements, keeping bugs as they are, incrementing the version and shipping it!
Also the default assumes that the values are in ascending order, which is computationally efficient as it can do a binary search.
But very dangerous in the most common scenario.
What would be even better is to be able to tell Excel to create a hash table / dictionary in memory from a table so that it can be queried very efficiently.
But as I posted everywhere on this page, Microsoft doesn't seem to be minded to add new features. Changing the color scheme between versions, making minor improvements, keeping bugs as they are, incrementing the version and shipping it!