“We all learned how to multiply with pencil and paper, even great big numbers and decimals. But when it comes to something important like a blueprint or a scientific formula we reach for a calculator – or a spreadsheet. That’s much more reliable, right? Well, not if the spreadsheet is Excel 2007. Over the weekend a member of the microsoft.public.excel newsgroup revealed that Excel 2007 thinks that 850*77.1 is 100,000,” Neil Rubenking reports for AppScout.
MacDailyNews Note: That’s funny, Apple’s Numbers says 850*77.1= 65,535. In other words, the correct answer.
Rubenking continues, “If it were just 850*77.1 that gave a wrong answer, we could probably work around that. But there are tons of other problem numbers, as I discovered for myself. I set up a spreadsheet to divide 65,535 by every number from 1 to 65,535 itself, then multiply the number by that result. So, for example, it divided 65,535 by 26 to get 2,520.577. Then it multiplied 26 by 2,520.577 to get… 100,000?! Over ten thousand of these simple calculations gave the wrong answer.”
MacDailyNews Note: Doing the same thing with Apple’s Numbers yields the correct results every time.
Full article with links here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “RadDoc” for the heads up.]
MacDailyNews Take: Here’s another little equation: $400 for Office 2008 for Mac – $79 for iWork ’08 = $321 in your pocket and the ability to multiply correctly.
ouch… reminds me of dell’s earning reports
Kinda reminds me of Intel’s FPU fiasco back a few years ago.
Excel equation:
Vista > excellent
Correct equation:
Vista < excrement
heh heh, remember the little program “Intel Calc” (I think it was called) It gave a wrong answer to any equation. Well, it seems Excel is going retro.
Microsoft: losing trust daily…
So that’s how they calculated the Zune and Vista market share that they keep referring too…
Funny
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”smile” style=”border:0;” /> Thank you MBU!
lol @ Jeff!
This is actually pretty scary, considering how many businesses use Excel 2007 for their accounting….
Apple’s not quite immune to calculation errors. Open the Calculator app and set it to RPN mode, and hit “C” to clear it. Enter a non-integer value (e.g., 3.1416) and click Enter, then click 0 then +. The correct answer should be 3.1416, but instead, Calculator rounds down to 3. Try the same thing, but add 0.00 and you get 3.14. So, when adding receipts in RPN mode, be sure to enter whole dollar amounts with .00 at the end.
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”grin” style=”border:0;” />
Microsoft’s Office:mac 2004 gets the correct answer too. Move along quietly. No news here.
Careful there, MDN – Office 2008 for Mac isn’t a released product yet. Better to compare it to the currently shipping Office 2004, lest you be castigated for what you yourselves have castigated others for doing on this very site.
This is why we don’t calculate Bill Gates taxes on anything using his software.
WE KNOW
BTW anyone using OfficeMac is most likely a terrorist and needs to be shot while picking the software off the shelf. Because just by touching any M$ software means you intend to do your country harm.
Incredible, MS has really bad configuration management. Excel 2003, same test and every calculation correct. Why would a company take working code and touch it?
This is the new Math.
Your potential, our math.
Imagine building you home using calculations from a Microsoft program..
Those bridges in USA that fell down, did they were build using microsoft programs? The twin towers? What else is falling down and the owners are blaming the architects?
Uh, NewsBreaker, there’s a difference between rounding errors (number of significant digits to display) and something like this. At the very least–even if you want to consider it a bug–there’s a work-around (enter the appropriate number of significant digits).
The work-around for Excel? Don’t do a multiply that results in 65,535 anywhere in the equation! For example, (850 * 77.1) + 1 will give you 100,001.
Much bigger deal.
Wow…this is kinda like having a vasectomy.
You can screw everyone in sight
and still not multiply.
Great take MDN!
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”LOL” style=”border:0;” />
@BuriedCaesar
You’re not seeing the forest for the trees. The point here is that this is just another example of the lack of quality control at Microsoft.
Nice one TT
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”grin” style=”border:0;” />
Zune Tang. Now I know you’re an impostor and NOT a real Microsoft Apologist.
And I thought Macadays take really sums it al up…
“Microsoft: losing trust daily…”
Classic…
Should be carved in bronze and mounted above the office doors of IT techs throughout the world…
@NewsBreaker
Apple’s Calculator is displaying the proper precision based on the data you have entered.
@Jay-Z – Thanks for the eyesight check – I can see quite clearly not only the forest and the trees, but the oceans in between. I think it may be you who’s only seeing the one tree (this post and resultant comment) in the forest that was my comment about MDN’s current and past commenting practices, not just on this story, but in many others in the past.
So I’ll ask more pointedly – why can’t MDN be held to their own standard of prior conduct or at least be consistent in how they apply that standard? Remember what happened when the M$ shills came out saying that Vista was so much better than Tiger, even before it was released? MDN (rightly) tore them a new one for trying to compare an existing product (Tiger) to a yet-to-be-released OS. Why should it be any different when MDN tries the same tactic?
Apple must have used Excel calculate the original price for the iPhone.
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”wink” style=”border:0;” />
Thanks, W. J.