Patrick Burns wrote:
I'm in the process of researching problems with Excel. The references given by Tim and Marc seem to lead to discussions of most of the problems with statistical procedures in Excel. The executive summary is that if it is in Excel and it looks like statistics, then avoid it.
However, there are some other issues as well. Here are three:
1) For those of us used to S, Excel gives a non-intuitive result for:
-2^4
Yes. However, OO Calc gives the same result as Excel (Office 2003). Are they trying to
heavily to mimic Excel?
I wonder how many formulas are in existence that have unintended results due to this.
2) When numbers in scientific notation are written to ascii (csv or txt), Excel
decides that some of the digits are unnecessary and doesn't write them to the
file. As far as I can tell the number of significant digits that you get is arbitrary
and capricious. Apparently Microsoft thinks of this as a feature -- I'm not sure
what they think the up-side is. If you want all of your digits, make sure that none
of the numbers are displayed in scientific notation. (Yes, what is written depends
on what is displayed, but it is not WYSIWYG.)
Tried this to with OO Calc. All were written with 14 significant digits. However, test was very
fast and needs replcation investing some more time.
Yes. Done, but also on OP Calc with *exactly* the same result.
3) In the olden days if there were a blank cell in a range of cells on which a
function operated (a mean perhaps), then Excel decided that the blank meant
zero. Microsoft changed this so that blank cells are ignored (apparently a good
thing). However, if you reference a blank cell, it is then counted as zero.
Exercise: In the first column put numbers in the first few rows, but leave one
cell blank. below that do the average of the cells (including the blank). Now
in cell B1 put "=A1" and copy this formula down column B. You will get two
different means.
Does one need to investigate OO Calc in the same way as has been done with Excel?
Kjetil
Patrick Burns
Burns Statistics [EMAIL PROTECTED] +44 (0)20 8525 0696 http://www.burns-stat.com (home of S Poetry and "A Guide for the Unwilling S User")
Tim Churches wrote:
Shawn Way wrote:
I've seen multiple comments about MS Excel's precision and accuracy.As always, Google is your friend, but see for example http://www.nwpho.org.uk/sadb/Poisson%20CI%20in%20spreadsheets.pdf
Can you please point me in the right direction in locating information
about these?
Tim C
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