Excel Fails Math Test, open source is important

B

bogz

Temporal Navigator
I hope nobody is using Excel for researching time travel ;-)

Try OpenOffice, the open source alternative that doesn't have math problems because the source code is public and PEER REVIEWED.


http://www.physorg.com/news110200561.html

(AP) -- Microsoft Corp.'s Excel 2007 spreadsheet program is going to have to relearn part of its multiplication table.
In a blog post, Microsoft employee David Gainer said that when computer users tried to get Excel 2007 to multiply some pairs of numbers and the result was 65,535, Excel would incorrectly display 100,000 as the answer.

Gainer said Excel makes mistakes multiplying 77.1 by 850, 10.2 by 6,425 and 20.4 by 3,212.5, but the program appears to be able to handle 16,383.75 times 4.

"Further testing showed a similar phenomenon with 65,536 as well," Gainer wrote Tuesday.

He said Excel was actually performing the calculations correctly, but when it comes time to show the answer on the screen, it messes up.

Gainer said the bug is limited to six numbers from 65,534.99999999995 to 65,535, and six numbers from 65,535.99999999995 to 65,536, and that Microsoft is working hard to fix the problem.
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Also another story that would be better suited on a general board...which we lack... but certianly little to do with time travel. ALOT more to do with computer programing. Proly better suited on Cnet.
 
bogz,

Great information. I agree with Titorite that both of your recent computing problem posts aren't really time travel related. But the information itself is important.

I PM'd Raul (MOP) and asked him if he can add a General Discussion forum to the forum list. We'll see.

In the mean time I don't think that you'll get too many complaints for making notifications about useful computing issues.

Thanks for the heads up.

BTW: I don't use too many open source programs but I do love The Gimp. It's a lot more powerful than PhotoShop and one hell of a lot less expensive - like free.
 
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