CHIINV

[Maheendra Kasmalkar]

Hello,

I am trying to use CHIINV function in Excel (I have
Excel 2002). The help guide says that the
degrees_of_freedom could be as high as 10^10. But as soon
as I hit 1038 (slightly more than 2^10), I start getting
NUM! error. Anybody else experience this? Is this a bug
or a setting issue. Please help.

Thanks
Maheendra Kasmalkar
(e-mail address removed)

 

[Harlan Grove]

I am trying to use CHIINV function in Excel (I have
Excel 2002). The help guide says that the
degrees_of_freedom could be as high as 10^10. But as soon
as I hit 1038 (slightly more than 2^10), I start getting
NUM! error. Anybody else experience this? Is this a bug
or a setting issue. Please help.

This is a known, er, limitation. It's been known and left unchanged for so long
that it's impossible to believe Microsoft is unaware of it. They simply don't
want to spend any money fixing it. What, you thought Microsoft wastes money
hiring programmers who know how to write numerical software?

See the linked article for work-arounds.

http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=3E92D015.9000006@no_e-mail.com