[R] numbers and decimal points

[Ramon Diaz]

Dear Janet,

In Spain, it is common for spreadsheets to use commas for the decimal point. 
As well, (the spanish version of) some statistical software allows either 
comma or period. 

However, most people I know of have no problem at all using the period (and 
many of them do change the defaults in their OS and/or spreadhseet, to use 
the period instead of the comma, precisely to avoid the confussion you 
mention).

Best,

Ramón





On Friday 14 March 2003 16:12, 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).
>
> We're trying to make our program as foolproof as possible, and would
> prefer not to give users a chance to have commas as both decimal points
> and field delimiters.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Janet Rosenbaum					  jerosenb at fas.harvard.edu
> Center for Basic Research in the Social Sciences, Harvard University
>
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> R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list
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-- 
Ramón Díaz-Uriarte
Bioinformatics Unit
Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Oncológicas (CNIO)
(Spanish National Cancer Center)
Melchor Fernández Almagro, 3
28029 Madrid (Spain)
http://bioinfo.cnio.es/~rdiaz