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Subject: Re: [office-comment] Statistical SUMMARY() function
Leonard Mada: > 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. I agree that statistical summary analysis of a dataset is useful. I'm not convinced that this is best done by a function, though. There's no way to know how many rows it will create, for example, which will cause many problems for most implementations. This looks a lot more like the graphing capabilities than a function. E.G., you can set the range of values, and then auto-generate a separate summary report. Instead of a graph, it'd be a display of the statistical information. I agree that if reports aren't auto-calculated you can end up with misleading results. But that is true for graphs too. I think it'd be better to think about this being similar to the graphing capabilities, and going from there. I think it's hopeless to enter _this_ round anyway. There are no implementations, and that's usually a killer unless it's easy to implement, clear, and solves a problem that's widely agreed to. Other than IFERROR() and NUMBERVALUE() I don't recall adding anything to the spec that didn't have at least one implementation, and those two had simple semantics and clear value. --- David A. Wheeler
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