Re: All hail Neo!

From: Marshall Spight <marshall.spight_at_gmail.com>
Date: 26 Apr 2006 12:04:27 -0700
Message-ID: <1146078267.079529.240200@g10g2000cwb.googlegroups.com>

JOG wrote:

> PMFJI, I thought it might be useful to point out that spreadsheets have
> had to address this problem since their inception. As far as I know
> they, by default, ignore empty cells when averaging ranges, as opposed
> to dropping out with an error. As such they view the empty cell as as
> not existing in the range at all. If all cells are empty then no range
> exists and an error results.

Interesting.

I just fired up Excel 2003. I entered two columns of numbers, and left one cell empty in each column. Then I set the formula for the third column to be col1 + col2. Then I got the sum of the first two column. It behaved exactly as I propose: missing values were ignored, both on the vertical sum and on the horizontal sum. This preserves the SUM(A) + SUM(B) = SUM(A+B) property as well.

Would anyone care to propose a plausible use case for not wanting this behavior?

Marshall Received on Wed Apr 26 2006 - 14:04:27 CDT