Re: [office-formula] List of functions in OpenFormula, dealingwith LEGACY.*

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

On Fri, 2008-06-13 at 14:21 -0400, David A. Wheeler wrote in slightly
different order:
> In summary, I'd like to do this:

> Make NORMDIST have defaults:
>  Number Mean = 0; Number StandardDeviation = 1; Logical Cumulative = TRUE()
> 
> Make other DIST functions have default Cumulative = TRUE(), for ease of use.
> 

I agree completely

> LEGACY.NORMSDIST => NORMSDIST
>   where NORMSDIST(x) = NORMDIST(x;0;1;TRUE())
>   since this is also well-defined and useful

I disagree here. In fact I could see much more reason for dropping
LEGACY.NORMSDIST completely rather than turning it into a non-legacy
function. After the above change with respect to the default values of
NORMDIST,

NORMSDIST(x) = NORMDIST(x)

As a consequence there is no reason why, in the file format, we would
distinguish between NORMSDIST and NORMDIST. While NORMSDIST would could
exist in some legacy MS Excel files, when the file is converted to
openformula format NORMSDIST could (should) just be translated into
NORMDIST.

It really does not make sense to have two versions of the same function,
even if one of them can be called with additional arguments.

> 
> Rename:
> LEGACY.CHIDIST => CHISQDISTRIGHT
>   since this is well-defined and useful (no need to eliminate)

Since CHISQDISTRIGHT is just (1 - CHISQDIST(...;TRUE())) I would
question whether it is indeed useful, but that probably lies in the eyes
of the beholder.
Having said that, if we want to accept this as a non-legacy function, I
would think that we should similarly have right tail functions for all
other DIST functions. I don't think it makes sense for a standard to
treat one distribution special in this regard. (IN fact if we wanted to
treat one special then it should be the normal distribution rather than
the chisquare distribution.)

> Do similar operations for NORMSINV, NORMINV.

similar comments as above

> 
> LEGACY.CHITEST unchanged; maybe we can get more info on it.

Without further info what it should be doing, at best we can emulate
Excel or Gnumeric (which differ in their implementation) or OO (I don't
know what that is doing). SO this is a clear case of a legacy function.

> 
> Okay?  Objections?

see above

Andreas

-- 
Andreas J. Guelzow <aguelzow@pyrshep.ca>