Excel can't add....

[nickslick74]

Ok, it has a problem with a certain sum from multiplication, but who wants to see "Excel can't mulitply" as a title? Makes it sound like a bot!

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21033161/

 

[halo71]

That is pretty interesting! lol

 

[hynesy]

lol excel, funny how one specific multication causing problems.

 

[Daveskater]

that's quite funny

i wanna try it haha

i just gave it a go and it came up with 100000
brilliant stuff

 

[AlbertLionheart]

Now I know why I stuck with Lotus 123 all these years.

 

[Daveskater]

i don't blame you good ol' microsoft getting it right again

 

[AlbertLionheart]

Just checked OpenOffice Calc - that works OK.
The more I think about this, the weirder it is - first that MS could let this go for so long - but also that it has taken someone so long to find it!

 

[Daveskater]

the chances of someone finding this particular problem must be fairly low because it's such a random number and it involves multiplying decimals, unless it was just some sort of test

it's not often i need to get the number 65535 in my spreadsheets

 

[AlbertLionheart]

I googled it and found all sorts of stuff, including
"65535 is a frequently occurring number in the field of computing because it is the highest number which can be represented by an unsigned 16 bit binary number".
It is also a Mersenne number according to wiki.
Amazing!

 

[Daveskater]

wow, turns out it's not as simple as it first seems

an innocent number turned into the highest unsigned 16 bit binary number

who'da thunk it?

 

[LuckyM]

i just wonder what will book-keepers do if companies they work for use excel...