Arithmetic is Hard--To Get Right: Wolfram Research on Excel bug

Posted by hhm on Tuesday September 25, 2007 @11:14PM
from the blog.wolfram.com dept.

http://blog.wolfram.com/2007/09/arithmetic_is_hardto_get_right.html

( 11 comments | 20 points | on HN )

Re:Arithmetic is Hard--To Get Right: Wolfram Research on Exc... by derek on Wednesday September 26, 2007 @02:18AM (#59737)

Article summary:

Math is hard, buy Mathematica, buy Mathematica, here's a picture of Excel, buy Mathematica, buy Mathematica, math is hard unless you buy Mathematica, buy Mathematica, BUY MATHEMATICA, BUY MATHEMATICA, ... I SAID BUY MATHEMATICA OR MATH WILL BE HARD!!! BUY IT!!! BUY IT NOW!!!

Note that the salesmanship in the summary is a bit more subtle than the actual article.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Arithmetic is Hard--To Get Right: Wolfram Research on Exc... by mhartl on Wednesday September 26, 2007 @11:16AM (#59828)

This reminds me of a bug in Mathematica from back in the late '90: there was a whole class of sums that Mathematica said were negative, even though each term in the sum was strictly positive! "Carry problem", my ass.

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Re:Arithmetic is Hard--To Get Right: Wolfram Research on Exc... by kcl on Tuesday September 25, 2007 @11:26PM (#59692)

He's convinced me. I'm going to use Mathematica for all my spreadsheets now.

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Re:Arithmetic is Hard--To Get Right: Wolfram Research on Exc... by jsjenkins168 on Tuesday September 25, 2007 @11:44PM (#59694)

Thats kind of like buying a Bugatti Veyron to go pick up groceries.

But if you can afford it, more power to you. Mathematica is like $2k IIRC.

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Re:Arithmetic is Hard--To Get Right: Wolfram Research on Exc... by rms on Tuesday September 25, 2007 @11:47PM (#59696)

It's also available for free on your favorite bittorrent tracker or eMule. I'd use a Bugatti Veyron to get my groceries if I could acquire one for free without causing any economic loss to anyone. Hell, I'd use a new one every single day.

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Re:Arithmetic is Hard--To Get Right: Wolfram Research on Exc... by palish on Wednesday September 26, 2007 @03:05AM (#59750)

But would you pay for it if you had the money?

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Re:Arithmetic is Hard--To Get Right: Wolfram Research on Exc... by tokipin on Wednesday September 26, 2007 @07:11AM (#59774)

i bought mine when i was a student, and it cost me a hundred or two bucks. if i had the money -- yes, i would pay for the non-student version. i don't know of a more multiparadigmy language, and it's more or less the most powerful computational environment available in terms of what you can do

unfortunately the language isn't very readable -- not in the semantic sense, but just how it looks. the usage of square brackets for functions (myFun[arg]) is particularly ugly, and absolutely hideous when nested

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Re:Arithmetic is Hard--To Get Right: Wolfram Research on Exc... by rms on Wednesday September 26, 2007 @03:57AM (#59755)

For Mathematica, I would buy it if it was required in a specific professional context. For what I normally calculate, Google is fine and I use a TI-89 if I need to solve anything symbolic. Mathematica is significantly harder to use than either of those for me.

And instead of a Bugatti Veyron, I'd get two Tesla Roadsters and buy ten more for friends or as company cars for employees.

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Re:Arithmetic is Hard--To Get Right: Wolfram Research on Exc... by kcl on Wednesday September 26, 2007 @01:35AM (#59721)

I was poking fun : )

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Re:Arithmetic is Hard--To Get Right: Wolfram Research on Exc... by joe on Friday September 28, 2007 @01:04PM (#60681)

> Of course, this works just fine in Mathematica...

Works just fine in bc(1) too.

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Re:Arithmetic is Hard--To Get Right: Wolfram Research on Exc... by axod on Wednesday September 26, 2007 @01:46AM (#59723)

Yeah arithmetic is so hard most calculators have bugs in them... oh wait a second...

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