Re: [office-comment] Statistical SUMMARY() function

[Sheldon Britton <sab_orion@verizon.net>]

Hello Robert,

Thank you for a most interesting email regarding the above mentioned 
subject matter which served to remind me that I had some time ago 
submitted a query on this forum regarding the conversion from Financial 
Rate of Return (IRR) to Economic Rate of Return (ERR); and, here is the 
rationale for this on the basis of an extract from a 1998 Lotus 
Development Corporation communication:

Re: "Concerning the issues with 1-2-3 that are talked about in the 
documentation you gave me, most of the issues are related to converting 
files between older and newer versions of product and converting 
documents between Lotus and Microsoft. Anytime a file is saved backwards 
or saved with an older file format than the format the file was created 
under, such as saving a 1-2-3 , 97 file for Windows 95 into a WK1 format 
for DOS, then naturally we are expected to loose certain features due to 
technology and features that are present now that were not present 8 - 
10 years ago. Similarly, if we try to convert a file from Lotus into 
Excel or Excel into Lotus, due to differences in the products not every 
feature will be converted perfectly with the file filters that are 
available. Both Lotus and Microsoft create similar spreadsheet programs; 
however, there are several differences in both programs and these 
differences will remain to distinguish the products apart. We do try to 
design conversion filters that will allow as much of the file formats as 
possible to be exchanged and converted without disrupting the actual 
file design and format.

In one of your letters you made mention of the @IRR and @ERR functions 
in the 1-2-3 product. By design the @IRR (notably "absent" in Open 
Office) will calculate the Internal Rate of Return; where the @ERR is 
used in conjunction with other formulas, posted was an "ERR" showing an 
error was received in the calculations. As far as I can see in the 
program I cannot find an @ERR function that will allow us to calculate 
an Economic Rate of Return"

Can you say to what extent can the question regarding the conversion 
from */Internal Rate of Return (IRR) to Economic Rate of Return (ERR)/* 
within the framework of the "Open Formula 1.0..." be addressed at this 
time; and, if so what would be the strategies for implementation.

Thank you.

Best regards,

Sheldon A. Britton
Orion Resources International
(IBM Business Partner - PartnerWorld for Developers)

robert_weir@us.ibm.com wrote:
> HI Leonard,
>
> Thanks for the proposal.
>
> Another way of accomplish this might be something in the middle.  So, 
> imagine a application MENU choice that instead of calculating the values 
> and pasting them in as static values -- an approach with the liabilities 
> you mention -- have the Menu option paste in the underlying formulas.  So 
> a menu option that pastes in a range/block of formulas.  This approach 
> might be applicable in other places as well: a formula block template, 
> where you have a group of related functions that you want to paste in at 
> once, but have a single dialog box for filling out the common parameters. 
> This would make it more of an application UI feature than a format 
> question.
>
> In general, OpenFormula 1.0  is not trying to extend the conventional 
> spreadsheet formula model used by Excel, etc.  We're trying to create 
> something that is well-documented and compatible.  However, once we have 
> that core, I am quite open to the idea of extending it in the future to 
> create more specialized functionality. 
>
> My preference would be to treat this holistically.  For example, we take 
> it as a task to improve ODF for use in engineering.  We create a 
> subcommittee to investigate this topic, talk with engineers, find out what 
> is needed, etc., and the results come back that spreadsheet needs some 
> more formulas, more chart types, and presentations need the ability to use 
> mathematical notation.  There could be similar efforts for medical, 
> academic, financial, etc.  But it will work best where we an alignment of 
> interested experts willing to help specify the requirements, as well as 
> vendors or open source projects willing to implement these features.
>
> -Rob
>
> Leonard Mada <discoleo@gmx.net> wrote on 06/02/2008 06:42:36 PM:
>
>   
>> Dear list members,
>>
>> One of the most used features in spreadsheets is to analyze and 
>> summarize the data. This is used in academia and businesses alike.
>>
>> In both instances, spreadsheet users often need to perform an 
>> exploratory data analysis and in one of the first steps they will 
>> summarize their data.
>>
>> I discussed this issue more fully at:
>> http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=89980
>>
>> While Calc (and ODF) has (most) functions implemented as separate 
>> funcitons, it lacks a unified function to compute all parameters at 
>> once. MS Excel does come with such a 'Menu'-entry in the advanced 
>> statistical toolpack.
>>
>>
>> A.) MENU vs FUNCTION
>> ====================
>> Excel did implement a menu-command. Unfortunately, IF the data-changes, 
>> the computed statistics won't change and need to be manually updated. 
>> The user might not notice that the data has changed.
>>
>> Therefore I opt strongly against the Menu-command and for a 
>>     
> proper-function.
>   
>> Also, using menu commands is not transparent, especially IF the 
>> spreadsheet will be later used by someone else or if the user revisits 
>> the spreadsheet a couple of months later.
>>
>>
>> B.) COMPARATIVE SOFTWARE ANALYSIS
>> =================================
>>
>> 1.) MS Excel: does have a SUMMARY-Menu command in the advanced
>>     statistical package (but no separate function)
>>
>> 2.) professional statistical programs:
>>     e.g. R (http://cran.R-project.org) has a summary() function
>>     [and some other summary-type functions, like fivenum()]
>>
>> C.) UTILITY
>> ===========
>> Both academia (research) and businesses alike would benefit from such a 
>> feature.
>>
>> Users will be able to easily get all the relevant summaries. Summaries 
>> will be formatted as for publishing / presentation (see options later).
>>
>> D.) REASONING
>> =============
>> Despite my desire to teach people correctly summarizing the data, and 
>> compute the descriptive statistics, I have to admit that this is an 
>> illusive goal. It is much easier to have a function that computes 
>> everything automatically without any user-interaction, than hope for ALL 
>>     
>
>   
>> these people learning descriptive statistics.
>>
>>
>> D.) IMPLEMENTATION
>> ==================
>>
>> 1.) Function-Name: obviously: SUMMARY()
>>
>> 2.) Parameters: (range; option)
>>   - range: the data range in the spreadsheet
>>   - option:
>>      -- default: "BRIEF" OR 0: compute most important summaries
>>      -- "DETAILED" OR 1: compute advanced summaries
>>      -- "PUBLICATION" OR 2: compute summaries and format as for
>>          publication in a professional journal
>>      -- "TABLE" OR 4: compute summaries as for publication,
>>          BUT display them in tabular format (for inclusion in a table)
>>      -- some other: ... lets leave the feature-list open
>>   - results:
>>      -- an array with the important summaries
>>
>> IMPORTANT: This is an array function!
>>
>> REASONING for Options:
>>  - most of the time, users need only some basic descriptive statistics.
>>  - I am against displaying ALL possible parameters, when most of them
>>    are of NO use.
>>   [this is descriptive statistics]
>>  - the 'DETAILED' option will print more advanced statistics.
>>  - the 'PUBLICATION' OR 'PRINT'-option will additionally format the 
>>     
> results
>   
>>    as for print, so that the user can simply COPY/PASTE the results
>>  - the 'TABLE' is as the 'PUBLICATION', but in tabular format
>>
>> 3.) COMPUTED OUTPUT
>> ===================
>>  a.) the function shall verify IF the data is:
>>   -- numerical non-binary
>>   -- binary (numerical or categorical)
>>   -- categorical, NON-binary
>>   -- obviously, it can't detect ordinal values
>>
>>  b.) it should verify IF the first row in the series is a LABEL
>>   -- it should skip any eventual labels
>>
>>  c.) computed values should be:
>>
>>  NUMERICAL DATA
>>    BRIEF DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS
>>      min
>>      first quartile
>>      median
>>      third quartile
>>      max
>>      mean
>>      standard deviation
>>      median absolute deviation of the median (MAD)
>>       -- has the best possible breakdown point
>>     (I deliberately omit the mode; NO strong opinion about variance)
>>
>>    ADVANCED DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS
>>      ALL BRIEF PLUS additionally
>>      variance
>>      mode (well, lets include it)
>>      standard error
>>      CV (coefficient of variation)
>>      percentile 2.5% and 97.5%
>>      [for the IPR95%]
>>      mean absolute deviation of the mean (ADM - or average deviation)
>>      [although this is better known as the previously mentioned MAD, it 
>>     
> is
>   
>>       actually a much less robust estimator than the MAD]
>>      very robust locationless estimators:
>>        Sn = 1.1926 * MEDi{MEDj|Xi-Xj|)
>>        Qn = QUANTILE( |Xi-Xj|; 0.25), where i<j
>>     [see http://www.jstor.org/pss/2291267 for details]
>>
>>    PRINT
>>     - add text to the same cells and
>>     - group relevant parameters together
>>     - to allow easy COPY/PASTE:
>>     *median (range)* 'median (min-max)'
>>          -- the '...' are the actual values for these parameters
>>          -- the *...* are strings
>>          -- the range, IQR and IPR95% refer to the 2 separate values,
>>              NOT the difference
>>     *median (interquartile range)* 'value (value - value)'
>>     *median (IPR95%)* 'value (value - value)'
>>     *mean (SD)* 'value (value)'
>>
>>     - both the TEXT and the values should be provided in the same cell,
>>       so as to allow easy COPY/PASTE
>>     - both 3 versions of the MEDIAN (...) should be provided
>>       [they serve different purposes and range / IQR / IPR95% are always
>>        grouped with the median]
>>     - I prefer 'mean (SD)' over mean +- SD, because the mean +- SD makes
>>       actually NO sense; it is mean +- 2*SD that makes sense
>>
>>    TABLE:
>>     - as PRINT, BUT display the names/text-strings in the first column
>>     - and the values in the next column
>>     - to easily COPY/PASTE as a table
>>
>> I will discuss the NON-numerical details in a later post.
>>
>> Sincerely,
>>
>> Leonard
>>
>> P.S. I hope to get some time later this week to rephrase the BINOMDIST() 
>>     
>
>   
>> description. I did not forget about it, I was just too busy.
>>
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