Sunday, 2 June 2013

What is the largest number the spread sheet programs can handle? And what is my way out?

What is the largest number the spread sheet programs can handle? And what is my way out?

If I try to calculate large exponents in LibreOffice Calc or OpenOffice.org Calc, the results come out to be erroneous. See these two examples where I calculate 13^18,
Using LibreOffice Calc

Using OpenOffice.org Calc

The result is erroneous in both the cases, as we can find using Calculator (gcalctool).

All the above tests were done in Ubuntu. I can not comment on Excel in MS Office since I do not have access to it.
Now, using a calculator will be possible, but cumbersome. I need to fill up a table with more than five hundred values. I know that I can resort to Euler's theorem or Fermat's little theorem or corollaries of these, but actually I am going to use the aforementioned table to show numerical validity (and use) of these theorems.
Is there a way to coax the spreadsheet programs to give me correct results?

No comments:

Post a Comment