So the real question is what is the best way of discovering such mistakes, especially when the error message isn't informative enough?
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Always look at the data. Even if you don't have any apparent errors it is a really good idea to look at the data. Scan though the numbers (it's the first thing I did - the only thing I opened was the Excel file). I always graph the data and look at it, although not necessarily in Mathcad (I have other software that allows me to look at a very large number of files very easily). Maybe you see a spike. Or missing values (if you were to graph column 1 that's what you would see in this case). Or some other sort of weird behavior that you know can't be right. Looking at the data may take a little time, but it's likely to be a lot less time than could be wasted chasing red-herring "bugs" in the data analysis!
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