[R] how do i persuade IT to install R on PCs ?? ...and should I ??

[Marc Schwartz]

On Nov 23, 2009, at 7:24 AM, Barry Rowlingson wrote:

> On Mon, Nov 23, 2009 at 1:01 PM, David Winsemius <dwinsemius at comcast.net 
> > wrote:
>
>> It was a good read. We had a recent example submitted to r-help where
>> I had occasion to test their "solution 2" (use OO.org' Calc) and  
>> found
>> it to be just as bad at curve fitting for a polynomial as had been
>> Excel. Take a look at the pdf attached to this r-help item:
>>
>> https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-help/2009-November/218005.html
>
> Well, the OO.org guys are trying to make something compatible with a
> piece of MS software, but maybe this is taking it too far.
>
> I love the story that sections of Microsoft XML spec for Office says
> things like "Do whatever Excel does", thus setting into stone the bugs
> inherent in that package as an ISO standard...
>
> Barry



Just to reinforce Baz' statement about OO.org, for those who have been  
around here for a while, you may recall this discussion back in 2003:

https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-help/2003-June/034565.html

https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-help/2003-June/034860.html


Nothing has changed since then in OO.org's Calc version 3.1.1, which  
is the current release.


On OSX, I can add Numbers from Apple's iWork '09 the mix:

Formula: =4.145 * 100 + 0.5
Result:  415.000000000000000000000000000000

Formula: =0.5 - 0.4 - 0.1
Result:  -0.000000000000000027755575615629

Formula: =(0.5 - 0.4 - 0.1)
Result: -0.000000000000000027755575615629


So FWIW, Apple has not made the same errors as MS and OO.org, at least  
in this narrow example.

Also, here are two additional Excel resources:

David Heiser's page: http://www.daheiser.info/excel/frontpage.html

Patrick Burns' Spreadsheet Addition: http://www.burns-stat.com/pages/Tutor/spreadsheet_addiction.html


HTH,

Marc Schwartz