On Jun 17, 2010, at 4:29 PM, Ted Harding wrote: > On 17-Jun-10 20:36:27, Marc Schwartz wrote: >> On Jun 17, 2010, at 3:03 PM, Ted Harding wrote: >>> The thread "R licensing query" currently running has raised >>> the classic critcisms of using Excel for statistics. >>> >>> I was wondering: Has anyone applied the same or similar set >>> of tests to OpenOffice "calc"? >>> >>> Or would the Executive Summary be: "Calc is just like Excel"? >>> >>> (Not that I'm a spreadsheet user, if I can avoid it; but I >>> sometimes get asked about such things). >>> >>> Sorry to be completely non-R here, but I can't think of a >>> better place to ask! >>> >>> Ted. >> >> Ted, >> The most recent work on this that I know of, that includes Calc, is: >> >> On the Numerical Accuracy of Spreadsheets >> Marcelo G. Almiron, Bruno Lopes, Alyson L. C. Oliveira, Antonio C. >> Medeiros, Alejandro C. Frery >> JSS >> Vol. 34, Issue 4, Apr 2010 >> http://www.jstatsoft.org/v34/i04 >> >> There have been some discussions on R-Help in the past (circa 2003), >> which I have participated in, which discuss some of the faults in Calc, >> such as rounding numbers "close to 0" to 0 (like Excel does) and some >> of the non-IEEE 754 floating point behavior (like Excel does)... >> >> HTH, >> Marc Schwartz > > Thanks, Marc, it helps indeed! Not so off-topic as I feared, either, > since R itself was used as a tool in the investigations, and gets > honourable mention at the end: > > "Finally, as a rule of the thumb, every user should be aware > that spreadsheets have serious limitations. Other platforms > are advisable, being currently R the most dependable FLOSS > (Free/Libre Open Source Software, see Almiron et al. 2009)." > > Executive Summary: There is no general justification at all for > using oocalc rather than Excel. It is sometimes better, sometimes > worse, does not have the same features as Excel, and in its own > way can drop you just as deeply in it. > > Ted.
I would say that there be a candidate for the 'fortunes' package.... :-) Regards, Marc ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
