Regarding Peter's comment:
One of the lesser known facilities in Excel is array formulas.
Array formulas are formulas with results taking up a range, e.g. a column,
and not only a cell. That way, you can do vector and matrix operations.
Using this mechanism essentially allows you to do what you want, create one formula
for a whole column, without the need to copy the formula.
One of the problems many statisticians have with Excel that they do not know
the more advanced features and judge the software based on their
somewhat limited knowledge.


On Nov 11, 2010, at 1:38 PM, peter dalgaard wrote:

> 
> On Nov 11, 2010, at 12:39 , Tom Aldenberg wrote:
> 
>> Hi,
>> 
>> Having watched this discussion for some time, I would think RExcel, 
>> through RExcelInstaller, is the definitive, as well as most reliable, 
>> answer to the question. Or do I miss the point?
>> 
> 
> Only to the extent that you believe that Excel provides the definitive and reliable approach to data handling. There are people who disagree with that, e.g. those who have accidentally gotten the student number included in the grade point average, overwritten a formula cell with a constant, etc. 
> 
> Notice that other systems with "spreadsheet-like" viewers/editors, quite deliberately do not include full spreadsheet functionality. E.g., rather than have users enter a formula cell and replicate it along a column, SAS JMP allows you to attach a "formula property" to a column, which (other advantages and disadvantages of that system untold) strikes me as a considerably more sane approach to data transformations. 
> 
> Also, of course, RExcel is Windows-only and requires that you have Excel installed.
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Peter Dalgaard
> Center for Statistics, Copenhagen Business School
> Solbjerg Plads 3, 2000 Frederiksberg, Denmark
> Phone: (+45)38153501
> Email: pd.mes@cbs.dk  Priv: PDalgd@gmail.com
> 
> _______________________________________________
> R-SIG-GUI mailing list
> R-SIG-GUI@stat.math.ethz.ch
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-gui
> 

--
Erich Neuwirth
Didactic Center for Computer Science and Institute for Scientific Computing
University of Vienna





	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]

