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Subject: Re: [office] YEARFRAC, etc.


Bob,

Bob Jolliffe wrote:
> Greetings
>
> I think Dostoyevsky said "one and one make two is a fine thing; but one and one make three is a fine thing too."  Mind you I don't believe he was looking to standardise the conclusion - quite the opposite in fact.
>
>   
;-)
> It seems to me that YEARFRAC is quite a ridiculous notion for a function - in a number of ways it defies definition.  The only sane reason to have such a function is for "backward compatibility" with a rather idiosyncratic Excel.  Now I am no great believer in the virtues of having 29500 under the comforting wing of sc34 (we in SA are still hoping to appeal), but I guess whilst it is there this is an opportunity to demand clarification.
>
> There are no great alternatives here.  Should we simply not have YEARFRAC?  Patrick, it seems you are saying there is no correct answer so this is what we must do.  Or define YEARFRAC independently of the Excel non-definition?  It seems in this case that if Excel must be compatible with Excel, we have to (sadly) try to plod the same road on this one.
>
>   
Err, in a word, no.

Remember that we are standardizing functions that users *expect* to see 
in spreadsheets. Unfortunately, if we were to lose YEARFRAC, there are 
other financial functions that depend upon it. I know there are at least 
three but suspect if we looked closely we would find others.

I really don't see any alternative to following the "Excel 
non-definition" however it gets defined. In some ways that is more 
typical of standards, that is they codify existing behavior or 
definitions. And that is what users are going to be expecting. Not to 
mention it will be necessary for interoperability.

It isn't a happy situation but the thought of standards with differing 
definitions of something as basic as formulas is just a recipe for the 
mess that a formula standard is supposed to cure.

Hope you are having a great day!

Patrick


> Regards
> Bob
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Patrick Durusau" <patrick@durusau.net>
> To: "Andreas J. Guelzow" <aguelzow@math.concordia.ab.ca>
> Cc: office@lists.oasis-open.org
> Sent: 14 April 2008 08:46:16 PM
> Subject: Re: [office] YEARFRAC, etc.
>
> Andreas,
>
> I have asked David Wheeler to confirm but:
>
> Andreas J. Guelzow wrote:
> <snip>
>   
>> If there is no "correct answer", then we may want to decide on something
>> just for the sake for consistency, but clearly not if there is one.
>>
>>   
>>     
> My sympathies because I too thought there *had* to be a definition of 
> YEARFRAC somewhere. Simply made no sense to me that for all these years 
> it has not had a definition. David looked a lot longer than I did but we 
> both came up empty. There is no "correct answer" for YEARFRAC.
>
> Even more disturbing, David reports (and I believe him) that banks buy 
> electronic calculators for some financial calculations because they 
> "like" the answers. Yes, they have no idea why the answer is produced 
> but they like the results of a particular brand of calculator. Maybe 
> that is the reason why some of their calculations are so far removed 
> from any accepted economic reality.
>
> Hope you are having a great day!
>
> Patrick
>
>   

-- 
Patrick Durusau
patrick@durusau.net
Chair, V1 - US TAG to JTC 1/SC 34
Convener, JTC 1/SC 34/WG 3 (Topic Maps)
Editor, OpenDocument Format TC (OASIS), Project Editor ISO/IEC 26300
Co-Editor, ISO/IEC 13250-1, 13250-5 (Topic Maps)



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