Re: [office-formula] BETADIST parameter Cumulative

[Andreas J Guelzow <aguelzow@math.concordia.ab.ca>]

Hi Eike,

On Wed, 2007-21-03 at 15:55 +0100, Eike Rathke wrote:
> > About the constraint a <= x <= b that you suggested, what is its
> > purpose?
> > 
> > Sorry, I may have misunderstood your initial message.
> 
> That indeed may have been a misunderstanding. Currently, applications do
> have that constraint, but our definition in the spec does not have it,
> instead it specs to return 0 respectively 1 in case x is outside those
> ranges. So, it seems we would be fine if we didn't change anything there.
> 
> I'm just not sure if and how users rely on the behavior that giving an
> x outside the bounds [a,b] produces an error. Or may there be other
> reasons why an error should be generated? The problem is, as usually,
> that when migrating from "that other application" users expect to get
> the same behavior, be it reasonable or not.
> 
> I'm fine without the constraints if we can say that there is no reason
> to have them.

I know that there are many users that have complained that gnumeric has
that constraint since it is mathematically non-sense. I really can't see
how users may have benefited from the constraint, but of course there
may be some. Nevertheless I think the correctness justifies that we drop
the constraint.

Andreas

-- 
"Liberty consists less in acting according to
one's own pleasure, than in not being subject 
to the will and pleasure of other people. It 
consists also in our not subjecting the wills 
of other people to our own."  Rousseau


Prof. Dr. Andreas J. Guelzow
Dept. of Mathematical & Computing Sciences
Concordia University College of Alberta