https://bz.apache.org/ooo/show_bug.cgi?id=127640

--- Comment #6 from Patricia Shanahan <[email protected]> ---
In considering solutions, it is important to understand that deviating from
IEEE 754 will generally reduce precision. The standard was very carefully
designed by people far more expert than me in numerical analysis and floating
point arithmetic. Deviations also result in calculations getting different
results from other programs that follow the standard more closely.

The deviations OpenOffice, like Excel, makes to try to hide some of the
realities of floating point arithmetic should be kept to a minimum, to limit
the loss of precision and non-standard results.

Turning on "Precision as shown" by default would produce far bigger differences
from how Excel behaves, and far greater risk of significant loss of precision,
than anything we are currently doing. Many spreadsheets do not display inputs
and intermediate results to the precision that is needed in dependent
calculations.

The problem description puts a lot of emphasis on the fact that the numbers
only need two decimal places. That is very important and valuable information
that should affect how the numbers are managed. Unfortunately, that information
is not available in the spreadsheet calculations. There are two ways it could
be conveyed in the example spreadsheet, using ROUND or turning on "Precision as
shown".

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