Re: maths functions and spreadsheet

On 29/01/2008, e-letter <inpost(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
> Use two input cells, a1 and a2, to enter data and the results to
> appear in cells b1, b2, b3, b4.
> If I add a value of x in a1, I want the value y in a2 to be calculated
> using some formula such as y=3x. Similarly if I enter a value y in a2,
> I want a1 to be calculated.
>
> I also want values of a, b, c, d to be calculated and displayed in
> cells b1, b2, b3, b4 respectively, depending on a formula based upon
> values of x and y (for example a=2x^y, b=x-y, etc).
>
> From what I've been told so far, the above task cannot be achieved
> using a spreadsheet, since missing arguments need to be considered.
> Hence trying to investigate if some sort of database may be
> appropriate.
>
> As a novice it is difficult to make a judgement as to whether the task
> I want to achieve is best perfomed in a spreadsheet, database,
> programming language (fortran?) or some combination.
Well now it depends on the amount of static data your computations
require, but my guess would be that if you found a programmable
calculator with a physics module you'd be best served by that.

> On 29-01-08 Andrej wrote:
> "...would be pl/R,..."
> I presume you mean perl and R, well I have R; presumably I could
> substitute perl for another programming language.
No, I mean pl/R ... there's a project to embed R as a
language into Postgres.

> Now I have a spreadsheet which consists of empirical data and
> fundamental physical values used through numerous worksheets. I
> thought that it may be more efficient to use a database to store the
> various tables of empirical data, physical values, etc. and then have
> some spreadsheet, document, etc. where I could enter my variables (a
> and/or b) and see the resulting output (a simple table initially).
> Hope that this explanation helps.
Yes, I see where you're heading, and I reckon that a bit of
programming would be the way to go with this task. You
could conceivably solve it with either a RDBMS and some
programming (I think that would be overkill, frankly) or with
a spreadsheet and its native scripting language, or with plain
perl (python, .... ) & Tk (or GTK, wx, Qt or whatever you prefer).

My gut-feeling says option 3 is most suited to the task at
hand. Or, option four, search freshmeat for +calculator
+physics and see what comes up :} ... maybe you don't
need to re-invent the wheel after all?

> Yours,
>
> René
Cheers,
Andrej

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