If this guy had created that Excel itself, he would be smart.. not if he used a tool to improvise!!
College teaches you to learn stuff and not be dependent on tools..
Isn’t higher learning supposed to be more in tune with career reality? If I had someone working for me and they did a manual process when they could use a tool I would correct the behavior as inefficient.
How did you design the algorithm? How did you ensure your tests were accurate? Math isn't just knowing how to perform operations, it's knowing which operations to perform when. And especially in college where things get more theoretical, you don't learn how to do math so much as learning how to use math. Also, memorization is not the only way you should learn, but it does help you avoid reinventing the wheel. Being bad at math doesn't mean school is stupid; rather, being able to make a spreadsheet do your work for you despite being bad at math means that school worked and you just didn't notice.
In geology we had this class about geochemistry and with only a few clues we were supposed to determine which mineral we were talking about and it was simple but relly long so I made a program in my calculator which would do it for me very quickly and spent the rest of the class playing Pokemon on said calculator. Good times.
To make the tool he used he would first have to learn and understand he math he was avoiding with the tool. Bad at math doesn't necessarily mean can't learn math. In his cause it probably meant "really slow at math or makes small arithmetic mistakes during complex math and doesn't notice or both" for him to make another tool for whatever math he was learning he would first have to understand it well enough to make said tool. That's not being lazy that's being efficient especially seeing as whatever job he would be applying said math into he would be able to use such a tool.
College teaches you to learn stuff and not be dependent on tools..