[R] numbers and decimal points

ripley@stats.ox.ac.uk ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Fri Mar 14 16:51:57 CET 2003


On Fri, 14 Mar 2003, janet rosenbaum wrote:

> I have a question for our European readers:  how common is it to use
> commas as decimal points in spread-sheet and statistics applications?
> 
> Is it an inconvenience to require that all data use a period as decimal point?
> (i.e., 3.14159 rather than 3,14159).

Depends where you are in Europe ... it is extremely uncommon to the far
west of Europe.  Note that R itself does not allow this, so presumably
people using R do not find it an inconvenience and you will have seriously
skewed your sampling frame by asking on R-help if your program is not R
itself.

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595



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