HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: larson@minerva.sws.uiuc.edu (Bob Larson)
Newsgroups: comp.apps.spreadsheets
Subject: Re: @RISK and FORECALC
Date: 16 Oct 92 05:51:52 GMT
Article-I.D.: news.Bw79MH.198
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana

In <1992Oct12.163650.5776@gw.wmich.edu> scott@gw.wmich.edu writes:

>Does anyone have any info about two Lotus 1-2-3 add on programs
>named @RISK and FORECALC.  Both are for business forecasting.
>How do the products compare, and is one better than the other?

>Julie Scott
>Western Michigan University
>scott@gw.wmich.edu


I've never used ForeCalc, but I've used @Risk for 5 years (on and off)
to do environmental modeling,  Here is what it does, in a nutshell:

Say you have a spreadsheet that makes financial projections over a ten year
period, and in your opinion, one of the critical factors is what the
interest rates will be over the ten years. Instead of a what-if analysis,
@Risk  allows you to express the uncertainty in interest rates as a 
probabilty distribution e.g., a normal distribution with a mean of 9
and a standard deviation of 2.  With @Risk, this is done with one of
about 40 add-in @functions it provides. Instead of a cell for the
interest rate having a fixed value, you replace it with a function
such as @normal(9,2).  Everytime the sheet is recalculated, a new number
will be randomly drawn from the distribution. Thats the first part
of what @Risk does.  The other part is doing all the recalculations
for you.  After adding uncertainty to the model in however many cells
you want, you pop a menu and specify what output cells (profit or
whatever) you want it to track, and how many iterations you want it
to perform.  It will then do all the recalculations, storing your
output each time. Up to 1000 output cells can be tracked, and up
to 33,000 iterations can be performed.  When it finishes all the
iterations, it will analyze all the outputs and summarize the
results both in tables and in graphics.  It will compute mean,range,
min,max, s.d., percentiles, etc. and graph them as well.  Graphs
can be edited and overlayed before printing.

You also have the choice of monte carlo or latin hypercube
sampling, and can specify correlated sampling of variables.

Its really quite a powerful package.  Versions are available for
123 versions 2.xx and 3.1, as well as excel for the PC and the Mac.
I believe the current price is around $400.  If you would like, I 
could mail you the latest newsletter I got from the company that
makes it (their name slips my mind right now).  They also will mail you
a demo disk for free. Send me email if you would like the
newsletter or their address.

-------------------------------------------------------------
Bob Larson     blarson@uiuc.edu
Illinois State Water Survey
Office of Surface Water Resources and Systems Analysis


-- 
Lotus Software SIG
xx051
Newsgroups: comp.apps.spreadsheets
Subject: Re: Writing Macros in 123
From: ken.mason@pcb.batpad.lgb.ca.us (Ken Mason) 
Date: 7 Oct 92 17:42:00 GMT
Reply-To: ken.mason@pcb.batpad.lgb.ca.us (Ken Mason) 
Distribution: world
Organization: The Batchelor Pad PCBoard ~ Long Beach, CA ~ +1 310 494 8084

MS.The filename to use is auto123.wk3, but I'm not sure of where it needs
MS.to be located.  In 123 for DOS, it has to be in the directory where you
MS.start the program from.

        No, it needs to be in the default data directory, as defined
        under /Worksheet Global Default Directory.  That is not
        necessarily the same as the program directory;  in fact, it's
        infinitely preferably for it -not- to be the same (for
        housekeeping purposes).
From: jess@gn.ecn.purdue.edu (Jess M Holle)
Newsgroups: comp.apps.spreadsheets
Subject: Re: Excel 4.0 features?
Date: 16 Oct 92 04:43:02 GMT
Organization: Purdue University Engineering Computer Network

In article <1992Oct15.191726.22860@klaava.Helsinki.FI> pemakine@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Pekka Makinen) writes:
>     In addition to LINEST() function Excel has also a LOGEST() function,
>     which will give regression values for an exponential function. That
>     is at least some kind of a non-linear regeression.

Perhaps in one sense of the term "non-liner," however they certainly use
the same algorithm as for y=ax+b, except that they fit to 
ln(y) = ln(b) + x ln(a) which can be rewritten as y' = a'x + b'.  Therefore,
this is really just a special case of linear regression.

What I would consider non-linear regression would be something like fitting:

  y = a sin(b x + c)

I know of no way to linearize this.  This requires a different and more
complicated approach then linear regression.

Jess Holle
From: aoaass@registry.adelaide.edu.au
Newsgroups: comp.apps.spreadsheets
Subject: <None>
Date: 15 Oct 92 03:13:40 GMT
Organization: Office of the Registry, University of Adelaide
NNTP-Posting-Host: admin.registry.adelaide.edu.au

I have been trying to install Excel 3 onto my Mac SE and am having horrendous
problems. I am running 6.07 on a Mac SE with 40mg HD and 2mg RAM. I have
installed it successfully but when I go to get into the program it starts to
boot it and then it crashes, flashing the following mssage;' Sorry a system
error occured. Address error'.

A couple of wise friends suggested that it had something to do with the inits
and things I had installed. However when I take the inits off the HD the
problem remains.

Can anyone help me sor this out ????

Frustrated ffrom Down Under

Send personal email to;
aoaass@admin.adelaide.edu.au
Newsgroups: comp.apps.spreadsheets
From: A4422DAB@vm.univie.ac.at (Erich Neuwirth)
Subject: Re: How to combine cols of text in Excel 4.0?
Organization: University of Vienna
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1992 12:14:42 GMT

if A1 contains aaa and B1 contains 123
A1&B1 concatenates the strings giving aaa123


Newsgroups: comp.apps.spreadsheets
From: A4422DAB@vm.univie.ac.at (Erich Neuwirth)
Subject: Re: Function to select the 6 highest numbers
Organization: University of Vienna
Date: Sat, 10 Oct 1992 07:58:24 GMT

>I am using Excel 3.0 and need to be able to perform the following:
>For each row in the spreadsheet, I need to compute the summation
>of the 6 highest numbers.  Each row contains ten cells.  A cell
>may or may not contain a value.  Does anyone know an easy way
>to do this.

>Mark Fox
i don't know if this is available in excel 3.0, but excel 4.0
has a function
small(k,range)
which will give you the k-th smallest value of range.
so it is a sort, but not a menu sort which has to be updated
when  you change the values,
but a "live" sort which is updated like a normal formula.
in fact, it is a normal formula
erich neuwirth
p.s.: you should try to upgrade to version 4.0 as soon as possible,
it really is MUCH better than 3.0. which already was very good.



--
Mark Fox  Office (513) 445-6384 FAX (513) 445-2468
Mark.Fox@DaytonOH.NCR.COM  or   Mark.Fox%DaytonOH.NCR.COM@UUNET.UU.NET
NCR CITIS (Corporate Information Technology Integration Services)
Mark Fox, NCR PCD-6, 1700 South Patterson Blvd., Dayton, Ohio 45479
From: rgc3679@bcstec.ca.boeing.com (Robert G. Carpenter)
Newsgroups: comp.apps.spreadsheets
Subject: How to combine cols of text in Excel 4.0?
Keywords: Excel
Date: 12 Oct 92 18:53:20 GMT
Organization: Boeing Computer Services, Seattle

I can't figure out how to combine two columns of text
in Excel 4.0. For example, if you have these two columns
of text:

  aaa  123
  bbb  123
  ccc  123
  ddd  123

and want to combine them to end up with:

 aaa123
 bbb123
 ccc123
 ddd123

how would you do it?

Thanks in advance.

BobC.
Newsgroups: comp.apps.spreadsheets
From: mramesh@cbnewse.cb.att.com (m.ramesh)
Subject: Excel Fourier Analysis Plotting
Organization: AT&T
Distribution: na
Date: Thu, 8 Oct 1992 18:31:17 GMT
Keywords: fourier excel

With Excel 4.0 I genrated the Fourier data series and it appears to
be a comples number.  How do I get to plot his in excel?  Since it
is a periodic function I know it should like sine/cosine chart but how
do I plot it in Excel.

Thanks

Ramesh

ATT Bell Labs
Newsgroups: comp.apps.spreadsheets
Subject: Re: Market Research
From: johnnie@mtcons.almanac.bc.ca (John Wilkinson)
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 92 07:46:54 PDT
Organization: MT Construction, Nanaimo, B.C.

rwk@silver.sbi.com (Richard W. Kreutzer Consultant) writes:

> I am considering developing a product and would like some feed back from
> spreadsheet users.  Does you need:
> 
>     A product which would allow you to organize and retrieve spreadsheets
>     based on user defined criteria such as "Project", "Author", "Title" or
>     "Description", etc.?  I.e., a "database" of spreadsheets.
> 
> If so, what kind of features would you like to see in a product like this?

 I may be a canditate for such a product. I make my living doing lumber
takeoffs for several yards in my area, that is I figure how much wood it
takes to build a house from a given set of plans. My template has been
developed over the past three years and isn't particularly complicated,
using a Dsum to put the various materials into totals.
 I work with 5 different yards and preface the name of each new job with
a 2 letter descriptor and a 3 or 4 digit sequential number. I keep a master
list for each client using information stored in a1.b2, which includes
date, their client name and designer. I load this info into the master and
use that for billing and searching ( in case there are questions ). To keep
order I have a separate subdir for each yard and take older ones off to
floppy when there get to be too many.
 I also keep a separate template with the stats as to the amount of jobs
done. This part and the billing are done almost manually, which works
alright most of the time.
 About 30 % of the plans I look at are drawn by one designer and I keep
track of them, if a number repeats it's a bonus for me. Searching for
those numbers, though, is a manual process having to open the individual
master lists for each client. It would be nice to search across them all.
 My little system was developed using SuperCalc5, and I recently moved
to QuattroPro. I'm also pretty familiar with dBase and often thought
a combination would be helpful. I came up with all this stuff myself
because I don't know anyone else who makes their living in quite this
way.
Hope this sheds some light on a real-life situation

.. John Wilkinson
From: athanass@cs.concordia.ca (MICHAILIDIS athanassios)
Newsgroups: comp.apps.spreadsheets
Subject: Spereadsheet software for X11 wanted.
Date: 13 Oct 92 03:18:23 GMT
Followup-To: comp.apps.spreadsheets
Organization: Computer Science, Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec


Hello,

I am looking for an Excel like spreasheet software that can run
on a sun4 with os4.1.1 and X11. If there is someone who knows  
anything about such a software please respond via e-mail.  If there
is any interest on that subject I will forward any information I get.

athanass@cs.concordia.ca
Thanassis Michailidis
Concordia U Mtl Que Cnd.
From: rwk@silver.sbi.com (Richard W. Kreutzer Consultant)
Newsgroups: comp.apps.spreadsheets
Subject: Market Research
Date: 11 Oct 92 21:35:34 GMT
Distribution: comp
Organization: Integra Software Corporation

I am considering developing a product and would like some feed back from
spreadsheet users.  Does you need:

    A product which would allow you to organize and retrieve spreadsheets
    based on user defined criteria such as "Project", "Author", "Title" or
    "Description", etc.?  I.e., a "database" of spreadsheets.

If so, what kind of features would you like to see in a product like this?
--

--
        Richard W. (Dick) Kreutzer
Net:    rwk@quark.sbi.com				CIS:	70702,2174
Voice:  +1(801)571-2446					FAX:	+1(801)571-2448
Mail:   Integra Software Corp.; 1378 Jasmine Avenue; Sandy, UT 84092 (USA)
From: banshee@cats.ucsc.edu (Wailer at the Gates of Dawn)
Newsgroups: comp.apps.spreadsheets
Subject: No-echo password with QPW
Date: 8 Oct 1992 21:40:10 GMT
Organization: University of California, Santa Cruz
NNTP-Posting-Host: am.ucsc.edu


	With Quattro Pro for Windows, it took me ~1 minute to create a dialog
which prompted for a password (limited to 8 characters) in which the password
characters were echoed as "#", sent the password to a SS cell, and ran a 
comparison macro routine.  There is something to be said for the right tool for
the right task.

	If anyone wants the spreadsheet, send me some mail.  It will only work
with quattro pro for windows.
From: WHITESR@APPSTATE.EDU (*Steve White         )
Newsgroups: comp.apps.spreadsheets
Subject: Re: How to combine cols of text in Excel 4.0?
Date: 13 Oct 1992 00:30:10 GMT
Organization: APPALACHIAN STATE UNIVERSITY
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: conrad.appstate.edu
X-News-Reader: VMS NEWS 1.24

In <3840@bcstec.ca.boeing.com> rgc3679@bcstec.ca.boeing.com writes:

> I can't figure out how to combine two columns of text
> in Excel 4.0. For example, if you have these two columns
> of text:
> 
>   aaa  123
>   bbb  123
>   ccc  123
>   ddd  123
> 
> and want to combine them to end up with:
> 
>  aaa123
>  bbb123
>  ccc123
>  ddd123
> 
> how would you do it?
> 
> Thanks in advance.
> 
> BobC.


Assuming that the letters are in A1 to A4 and the numbers
are in B1 to B4, the following works in Excel 3.0 so I guess
it also will do the trick in Excel 4.0:

=A1&B1
=A2&B2
=A3&B3
=A4&B4

in C1 to C4 returns the following:

aaa123
bbb123
ccc123
ddd123

Steve
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
    << The above are nothing more than my personal opinions >>
stephen r. white -- whitesr@appstate.bitnet -- whitesr@conrad.appstate.edu
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: anne@ariel.its.unimelb.EDU.AU (Anne Williamson)
Newsgroups: comp.apps.spreadsheets
Subject: Excel 4.0 features?
Date: 14 Oct 92 02:45:05 GMT
Organization: University of Melbourne, Australia

Do any of you know if MS Excel/Windows 4.0 does linear/non-linear 
regression or curve fitting?  If it doesn't, do any of you know of a 
package that does?

Thanks for any light you may shed on the subject

Anne
From: wwm@ef5003.efhd.ford.com (Bill Meahan)
Newsgroups: comp.apps.spreadsheets
Subject: Anyone using external DLL's with Excel 4.0?
Date: Wed, 7 Oct 1992 13:31:31 GMT
Organization: Ford Motor Co., EFHD Ypsilanti Operations
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: ef5003.efhd.ford.com

Excel 4.0 is really a pretty powerful data manipulation system (more
than 'just' a spreadsheet).  One of its advertised capabilities is the
ability to use ANY external DLL for computational, interface or other
purposes.  Some of the "advanced" analysis fuctions are obviously done
this way and the API is pretty well documented.

Is anybody actually USING this feature?
What for?
What have been your experiences?
Did you use your own DLL's or somebody else's?

You may reply by e-mail, though I suspect others are interested so
posting replies may be more appropriate.

Thanks!

-- 
Bill Meahan			|EFHD Information Systems Staff
Plant Floor Systems Specialist	|Ford Motor Company
wwm@ef5003.efhd.ford.com      	| +1 313 487 6122
..!fmsrl7!pmsmam!wwm           |I'm not paid to speak for Ford!
From: kirsch@well.sf.ca.us (Gregory J. Kirsch)
Newsgroups: comp.patents
Subject: Re: [REQUEST] RSA claims 33 and 37 of U.S. patent 4,405,829
Date: 9 Oct 92 16:35:23 GMT
Organization: Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link

In <1992Oct6.223005.8776@cs.su.oz.au> rcain@netcom.com (Robert Cain) writes:


>The patent contains as claim 33:

>	In a communication system an encoding means for transforming a
>	transmit message word signal M to a ciphertext word signal C
>	where M corresponds to a number representative of a message and

>		0 <= M <= n-1

>	where n is a composite number and where C corresponds to a number
>	representative of an enciphered form of said message and corresponds
>	to

>		C = a[e]*M^e + a[e-1]*M^(e-1) + ... a[0](mod n)

>	where e and a[e], a[e-1], ... a[0] are numbers.

>Claim 37 is nearly identical except that cryptographic use is specifically
>claimed.

>Thus it appears that any cryptographic method using a polynomial modulo
>a composite infringes.  I am seeking opinions, particularly from any
>legal experts that may read this as to whether this claim which essentially
>claims the use of a single mathematical formula is defensable?

Claim 33, as it is written above, is presumably not a valid claim, and should
not have been allowed by the patent examiner.  Assuming that the claim above
is written exactly how it appears in the patent, it does not comport to
35 USC 112(6), which essentially requires that claims in "Means-plus-function"
language must include a combination of elements.  In the case of claim 33
above, there appears to be only one means: the "means for transforming...".
This means is the only element recited in the claim.

Therefore, regardless of whether the claim recites patentable subject matter,
the claim is not proper.
From: brendan@laplace.anu.edu.au (Brendan Scott)
Newsgroups: comp.patents
Subject: [INFO] Paper on Math Algorithms available for ftp
Date: 10 Oct 92 00:20:19 GMT
Organization: Basser Dept of Computer Science, University of Sydney, Australia
X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.3 PL11]

Hiya,
	I've just finished a paper on the patentability of 
Mathematical Algorithms. The paper begins by discussing the
existing law (mostly US) on the subject, before giving the
author's conception of the main qualities of mathematics. 
In the final part of the paper, we consider each of these
identified qualities in turn, and suggest that they pose
serious practical problems for the incorporation of 
mathematics within the patent system. 

For anyone who is interested, there is a copy of a postscript
version of the file being held on gauss.anu.edu.au
/inbox/essays/ru.ps.Z
(As you can see, it's been compressed. Use uncompress ru.ps.Z
to get the .ps file out.) 

The paper has 9000 (ish) words of text, supplemented by 
another 1000 in footnotes. There are 7 figures, and a 
couple of cover pages, for a total of 48  A4 pages (from 
memory).

I would be grateful for any comments that you may have. 

Brendan

(any problems with picking it up, please tell me. If the 
page count is a problem, I can recompile it w/out the 
cover pages, and with a smaller typeface.)

-- 
Brendan Scott, Australian National University, Canberra.   
(brendan@laplace.anu.edu.au)
Strictly no reproduction for commercial purposes.
From: pevzner@athena.mit.edu (Boris Pevzner)
Newsgroups: comp.patents
Subject: [INFO]  UNIX REVIEW "legal issue"
Date: 14 Oct 92 19:10:34 GMT
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
X-Full-Sender-Address: @bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU:news@bloom-picayune.mit.edu


To the interested:

The November issue of UNIX REVIEW (vol.10,no.11)
contains an article on the USL-BSDI suit,
as well as Carl Dichter's article in favor of software patents
mentioned earlier (by he author himself) on some of these forums.

Also, I just received a report from
US Congress's Office of Technology Assessment (OTA):
	"Finding A Balance: Computer Software, Intellectual Property
	 and the Challenge of  Technological Change."
This 200+ page paper provides excellent background on the issues
relevant to these forums.
Order from US Gov. Printing Office by calling 202-738-3238 ($11, VISA/MC.)

-Boris Pevzner
From: annius@sif.research.ptt.nl (Annius Groenink)
Newsgroups: comp.editors
Subject: Re: damn tabs
Date: 16 Oct 92 08:36:38 GMT
Organization: PTT Research

rv@erix.ericsson.se (Robert Virding) writes:

>Why not just use a sensible editor (emacs) which can distinguish
>between pressing the TAB key and putting a TAB character in a file?
>The problem goes away then.

So Emacs can display any file in the way the author has entered it? That's
interesting. I don't believe you, for then Emacs should first perform some
statistics on the text file:

First of all the text file should be entered with TABs represented by spaces
It is nice if your editor can be set to
insert spaces when you press the TAB key. Now when a text is loaded, the editor
should try and find a common denominator for almost all indentations in the
text. This will probably be the tab space the author used. The editor can then
change the action of the TAB key correspondingly.



-- 
Annius Victor Groenink      Universiteit Utrecht      PTT Research Leidschendam
Mathematics/Comp. Sc.        avgroeni@cs.ruu.nl       +31 70 3325445 (weekdays)
Atari ST/Music          A.V.Groenink@research.ptt.nl  +31 70 3464732 (evenings)
_____________My opinions are my opinions____________  +31 5700 29396 (weekends)
Newsgroups: comp.editors
From: dattier@ddsw1.mcs.com (DWT)
Subject: Re: damn tabs
Date: Sun, 11 Oct 1992 06:40:21 GMT
Organization: Contributor Account at ddsw1, Chicago, Illinois  60657

annius@sif.research.ptt.nl (Annius Groenink) wrote in <annius.718533231@freyr>,
not naming the previous posters:

| >:> I never understand why people object to tabs apart from when perverts
| >:> decide to treat them as other than every 8th position.
| 
| >:our printer setup assumes, by default, that they mean 3!  
| 
| Which is a hell of a lot more practical than 8. I don't know who invented the
| eight but s/he must have been stupid. Of course you would want one level of
| indentation to be the same as one tab. I think either we should stop using
| tabs at all or abolish the tab=8 standard and make it tab=3. I would love
| to swap printers.

Tabulation was invented for aligning columns of tabular text, and its adap-
tation for indenting structures in programming code came many decades later.

To set beginnings of table columns three spaces apart is very impractical;
most columns would have more than three characters' variation in the lengths
of their entries, so different lines would need different numbers of tabs
between column X and column X+1; also, you'd need three tabs between adjacent
columns most of the time to keep them far enough apart for legibility.  [But
I see that Mr. or Ms. (I don't speak Dutch and don't know which sex to
associate with the first name "Annius") Groenink uses only one space between
sentences, so perhaps legibility is unimportant to him or her.]

Columnar tabulation and structure indentation ought to be two separate
concepts with two different sets of terminology, but any given text is
likely to need only one or the other.

| I don't know who invented the eight but s/he must have been stupid.

The originator of eight-column tab stops wasn't "stupid," but he or she was a
typist, not a programmer, and probably died without ever touching a computer.

| Of course you would want one level of indentation to be the same as one tab.

"Of course" you would if the only value of tabulation in your life is the
indentation of program structures.  A dual standard of tab=3 for indenting
such structures and of tab=8 for aligning text would make sense.

David W. Tamkin   Box 59297   Northtown Station, Illinois  60659-0297
dattier@ddsw1.mcs.com    CompuServe: 73720,1570    MCI Mail: 426-1818
Newsgroups: comp.editors
From: hansm@cs.kun.nl (Hans Mulder)
Subject: Re: vi question - how to join two lines together 
Organization: University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands
Date: Fri, 16 Oct 1992 13:34:37 GMT

In <1992Oct15.115734.28806@cas.org> lwv26@cas.org (Larry W. Virden) writes:

>What I have is a bunch of lines like:

>abc \
>	xyz

>and I want to turn these into

>abc xyz

>What is the best way to do this in one command from within vi?

How about:

	:g/\\$/s///|j

This may not do what you want if two successive lines end in a \.
Would that be a problem?

--
Hope this helps,

Hans Mulder			hansm@cs.kun.nl
Newsgroups: comp.editors