Artigo Revisado por pares

The accuracy of statistical distributions in Microsoft® Excel 2007

2008; Elsevier BV; Volume: 52; Issue: 10 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1016/j.csda.2008.03.005

ISSN

1872-7352

Autores

A. Talha Yalta,

Tópico(s)

Scientific Measurement and Uncertainty Evaluation

Resumo

We provide an assessment of the statistical distributions in Microsoft® Excel versions 97 through 2007 along with two competing spreadsheet programs, namely Gnumeric 1.7.11 and OpenOffice.org Calc 2.3.0. We find that the accuracy of various statistical functions in Excel 2007 range from unacceptably bad to acceptable but significantly inferior in comparison to alternative implementations. In particular, for the binomial, Poisson, inverse standard normal, inverse beta, inverse student’s t, and inverse F distributions, it is possible to obtain results with zero accurate digits as shown with numerical examples.

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