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Doing statistics with a speadsheet -Perhaps not a good idea?
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John_Kane  
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 More options Dec 9 2005, 1:34 pm
Newsgroups: sci.stat.edu
From: "John_Kane" <John_K...@tricolour.queensu.ca>
Date: 9 Dec 2005 10:34:38 -0800
Local: Fri, Dec 9 2005 1:34 pm
Subject: Doing statistics with a speadsheet -Perhaps not a good idea?
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Something came to my attention that made me even more certain that
spreadsheets are not the best way to do statistics. I would be
interested to know if others have seen this behaviour when using a
spreadsheet.

Check of arithmetic operations on text cells.
A1 is a numeric value. B5 is a text formatted cell, C5 is a text
formated cell and was entered as '999 in all cases. D5 is a text
formatted cell
In a comparision of three spreadsheet the results were:

Cell contents
A1=  5               B5= Foo      C5 ='999     D5 = Harry

Software                OOo Calc v2.0.0       MS Excel 2003
Quatro Pro (WP v.12)

Operation                  Result                   Result
          Result
Add (A5+B5)                 5                      #VALUE!
     5
Multiply (A5*B5)            0                      #VALUE!
          0

Add (A5+C5)                 5                       1004
             5
Multiply (A5*C5)            0                       4995
             0
Multiply (A5*B5*C5)       0                     #VALUE!
       0
Add (B5+D5)                 0                     #VALUE
       *NA
Multiply (B5*D5)            0                     #VALUE
       *NA

Add (=5 + Foo)            #REF                  #Name
    *NA

*My demo copy of Quatro Pro did not appear to install properly and did
nasty things to a CD when it crashed so I decided to not to finish the
series for it.  I would be interested to hear what someone with Quatro
Pro gets for these operations.

John Kane, Kingston ON  Canada


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