[R] Who uses R?

Gabor Grothendieck ggrothendieck at gmail.com
Thu Sep 27 09:19:07 CEST 2007


As has been pointed out on the net its a display problem
and Excel's internal value is correct.  We can check this
by creating an Excel 2007 spreadsheet with
A1 = A2-1  gives 65534
A2 =850 * 77.1 gives 100000
A3 = A2+1 gives 100001
A4 = A2+2 gives 65537

and then running this code from R on the spreadsheet
to examine the internal values that Excel has stored:

library(RDCOMClient)
xls <- COMCreate("Excel.Application")
xls[["Workbooks"]]$Open("C:\\tmp2\\badcalc.xlsx")
rng <- xls[["ActiveSheet"]]$Range("A1:A4")
x <- rng[["Value"]]
x

When I run that I get this showing the internal
values are correct:

> xls <- COMCreate("Excel.Application")
> xls[["Workbooks"]]$Open("C:\\tmp2\\badcalc.xlsx")
An object of class "COMIDispatch"
Slot "ref":
<pointer: 0x001e7b94>

> rng <- xls[["ActiveSheet"]]$Range("A1:A4")
> x <- rng[["Value"]]
> x
[[1]]
[[1]][[1]]
[1] 65534

[[1]][[2]]
[1] 65535

[[1]][[3]]
[1] 65536

[[1]][[4]]
[1] 65537

On 9/25/07, Patrick Burns <pburns at pburns.seanet.com> wrote:
> Just speaking of the field I'm most familiar with, there
> are now users of R in many of the largest financial
> companies in the world.
>
> http://www.burns-stat.com/pages/Tutor/spreadsheet_addiction.html
>
> is one place to look for arguments against Excel.
> This was just updated to include an amusing numerical
> bug in Excel 2007. Guess what 850 * 77.1 equals.
>
>
> Patrick Burns
> patrick at burns-stat.com
> +44 (0)20 8525 0696
> http://www.burns-stat.com
> (home of S Poetry and "A Guide for the Unwilling S User")
>
> Eleni Rapsomaniki wrote:
>
> >Dear R users,
> >
> >I have started work in a Statistics government department and I am trying to
> >convince my bosses to install R on our computers (I can't do proper stats in
> >Excel!!). They asked me to prove that this is a widely used software (and not
> >just another free-source, bug infected toy I found on the web!) by suggesting
> >other big organisations that use it. Are you aware of any reputable places
> >(academic or not) that use R? (e.g. maybe you work for them)
> >
> >I would be really grateful for any advice on this. Also suggestions on arguments
> >I could use to persuade them that R is so much better than Excel would be very
> >much appreciated.
> >
> >Many Thanks
> >Eleni Rapsomaniki
> >
> >______________________________________________
> >R-help at r-project.org mailing list
> >https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> >PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> >and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>



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