Don't know how many of you have "upgraded" to Excel 2007 yet but Slashdot.org (tech-ish blog) is reporting a multiplication bug in excel. Given that many of us and your students use excel as the default math application I wanted to give everyone a heads-up on this - not sure how far this problem propagates outward.
Excel is reporting the result of the formula =850*77.1 as 100000 rather than the correct 65535. Others are reporting that this extends to any multplication/division combination that should yields 65553. (e.g. =5.1*12850 =10.2*6425, = 850/(1/77.1) and even =SUMPRODUCT(850,77.1,2,0.5) ) I have obtained similar results on my system with excel07 (with W/XP). excel03 on the same machine is reporting correct results. I know that stats and excel has been a perennial topic of discussion on this list since it's inception. It's too bad that now the issue becomes "normal" arithmetic. link: http://it.slashdot.org/it/07/09/24/2339203.shtml =========================== David Kirschtel, Ph.D. Sr Program Manager CUAHSI 2000 Florida Ave, NW Washington, DC 20009
