Re: All hail Neo!

"Marshall Spight" <marshall.spight_at_gmail.com> wrote in message news:1146078267.079529.240200_at_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
>

Good point.

Repeat the experiment with avg. The results are even more interesting than sum. Received on Wed Apr 26 2006 - 21:43:20 CEST