Rounding problem R vs Excel.
David A. Paul wrote:
I don't have the reference, but a biologist friend of mine once showed me a refereed journal article that purported to demonstrate numerical errors made by MSExcel. This would have been Excel97 or Excel2000... In any case, the journal's scope was biological in nature and the article was of interest since Excel is heavily used in that community.
An excellent source of information about the incompetence of Excel as a statistical package can be found on Jonathan Cryer's web page at http://www.stat.uiowa.edu/~jcryer/JSMTalk2001.pdf Some incredible howlers from their ``help'' pages are given, as are a number of useful references. (None from the biological literature however. If David Paul could dig up the reference mentioned by his biologist friend, it would be useful.) cheers, Rolf Turner rolf at math.unb.ca