Excel flawed for statistical calculations?

[kwlmy]

Hi all,

I saw this paper:
http://www.pages.drexel.edu/~bdm25/excel2007.pdf

This paper was published in 2008 so I'm not sure if these problems still exist in the current versions. Also, do financial institutions do a quality assurance check on their computational tools using benchmark problems?

 

[Jose T]

The article is about using Excel for involved statistical methods, which is not how most people use Excel.

Someone could be coding something and have it back out of Excel as an interface; in which case, the computations are being done by the compiler of a low-level language and fed into Excel but Excel didn't really have to 'do' anything. That is, if they are using Excel at all for statistical methods / numerical type stuff.

The limitations of Excel have been widely known for a long time. It's just still used because it's the spreadsheet program that everyone has and the amount of the time you can only conveniently communicate something through a spreadsheet is quite often.

 

[kwlmy]

Hi Jose, thanks for the info.