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Re: curve fitting -- Excel Accuracy

  • To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
  • Subject: [mg41112] Re: [mg40809] curve fitting -- Excel Accuracy
  • From: Ian Brooks <ianbrooks at earthlink.net>
  • Date: Sat, 3 May 2003 03:29:25 -0400 (EDT)
  • References: <200304221043.GAA29936@smc.vnet.net> <200304221043.GAA29936@smc.vnet.net>
  • Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com

A number of people wrote and asked for the details of the paper I referred 
to about Excel's accuracy.

It is

"On the Accuracy of Statistical Procedures in Microsoft EXCEL 97" (with 
Berry Wilson),
Computational Statistics and Data Analysis 31(1), 27-37, 1999


There is a new paper that I have not yet read

"On the Accuracy of Statistical Procedures in Microsoft Excel 2000 and 
Excel XP" (with Berry Wilson),
Computational Statistics and Data Analysis 40(4), 713-721, 2002


I understand there are some differences between the Excel versions, but 
that the underlying problems have not been addressed and Excel XP is not 
significantly different than 97.

Ian


>>Forget comparisons with Excel.  If you are trying to do anything remotely 
>>non-trivial Excel is almost certainly giving you garbage.  If you think I 
>>am exaggerating, take a look at the papers by Bruce McCullough who ran 
>>the NIST (National Institutes of Standards and Technology) statistics 
>>benchmark suite through Excel.  The results are appalling, but not 
>>surprising.  I don't have the paper to hand, but from memory of the 26 
>>non-linear curve fitting problems posed Excel gave COMPLETELY wrong 
>>answers to 21 of them!!!  By completely wrong, I mean that where the 
>>benchmark value is something like 0.6 Excel gave the answer as 13!
>>
>>If you need the reference I will try to dig it out.
>>
>>Ian



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