Arithmetic is Hard--To Get Right: Wolfram Research on Excel bug

http://blog.wolfram.com/2007/09/arithmetic_is_hardto_get_right.html

by hhm • 19 years ago

20 11 19 years ago

blog.wolfram.com

kcl2• 19 years ago

He's convinced me. I'm going to use Mathematica for all my spreadsheets now.

jsjenkins168• 19 years ago

Thats kind of like buying a Bugatti Veyron to go pick up groceries.

But if you can afford it, more power to you. Mathematica is like $2k IIRC.

rms2• 19 years ago

It's also available for free on your favorite bittorrent tracker or eMule. I'd use a Bugatti Veyron to get my groceries if I could acquire one for free without causing any economic loss to anyone. Hell, I'd use a new one every single day.

kcl2• 19 years ago

I was poking fun : )

joe• 19 years ago

> Of course, this works just fine in Mathematica...

Works just fine in bc(1) too.

axod• 19 years ago

Yeah arithmetic is so hard most calculators have bugs in them... oh wait a second...

derek• 19 years ago

Article summary:

Math is hard, buy Mathematica, buy Mathematica, here's a picture of Excel, buy Mathematica, buy Mathematica, math is hard unless you buy Mathematica, buy Mathematica, BUY MATHEMATICA, BUY MATHEMATICA, ... I SAID BUY MATHEMATICA OR MATH WILL BE HARD!!! BUY IT!!! BUY IT NOW!!!

Note that the salesmanship in the summary is a bit more subtle than the actual article.

mhartl• 19 years ago

This reminds me of a bug in Mathematica from back in the late '90: there was a whole class of sums that Mathematica said were negative, even though each term in the sum was strictly positive! "Carry problem", my ass.

Arithmetic is Hard--To Get Right: Wolfram Research on Excel bug

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