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The accuracy of statistical distributions in Microsoft® Excel 2007

Author

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  • Yalta, A. Talha
Abstract
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.

Suggested Citation

  • Yalta, A. Talha, 2008. "The accuracy of statistical distributions in Microsoft® Excel 2007," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 52(10), pages 4579-4586, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:csdana:v:52:y:2008:i:10:p:4579-4586
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    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Yalta, A. Talha, 2007. "The Numerical Reliability of GAUSS 8.0," The American Statistician, American Statistical Association, vol. 61, pages 262-268, August.
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    5. McCullough, B. D. & Wilson, Berry, 1999. "On the accuracy of statistical procedures in Microsoft Excel 97," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 31(1), pages 27-37, July.
    6. McCullough, B.D. & Wilson, Berry, 2005. "On the accuracy of statistical procedures in Microsoft Excel 2003," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 49(4), pages 1244-1252, June.
    7. H. D. Vinod & B. D. McCullough, 1999. "The Numerical Reliability of Econometric Software," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 37(2), pages 633-665, June.
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    Cited by:

    1. H.-J. Sun & Kaoru Fukuda & B. D. McCullough, 2017. "Inaccurate regression coefficients in Microsoft Excel 2003: an investigation of Volpi’s “zero bug”," Computational Statistics, Springer, vol. 32(4), pages 1411-1421, December.
    2. Hargreaves, Bruce R. & McWilliams, Thomas P., 2010. "Polynomial Trendline function flaws in Microsoft Excel," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 54(4), pages 1190-1196, April.
    3. McCullough, B.D., 2008. "Special section on Microsoft Excel 2007," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 52(10), pages 4568-4569, June.
    4. Varma, Jayanth R. & Virmani, Vineet, 2017. "Shiny Alternative for Finance in the Classroom," IIMA Working Papers WP 2017-03-05, Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, Research and Publication Department.
    5. Yalta, A. Talha & Jenal, Olaf, 2009. "On the importance of verifying forecasting results," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 25(1), pages 62-73.
    6. McCullough, Bruce D. & Yalta, A. Talha, 2013. "Spreadsheets in the Cloud - Not Ready Yet," Journal of Statistical Software, Foundation for Open Access Statistics, vol. 52(i07).
    7. Nash, John C., 2008. "Teaching statistics with Excel 2007 and other spreadsheets," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 52(10), pages 4602-4606, June.
    8. McCullough, B.D. & Heiser, David A., 2008. "On the accuracy of statistical procedures in Microsoft Excel 2007," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 52(10), pages 4570-4578, June.

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