More than 15 digits of precision?

[Opinicus]

{Using Excel 2002}

Is there a way to get more than 15 digits of precision in Excel? Possibly
with an add-in or something?

 

[Harlan Grove]

Is there a way to get more than 15 digits of precision in Excel?
Possibly with an add-in or something?

Natively, no.

There are some add-ins that claim to handle arbitrary precision, but
they need to store and load such values as text strings, so they can
be quite slow compared to calculations using standard numberic types.

What are you doing that requires more than 15 decimal digits?
Spreadsheets are horrible tools for working with large prime numbers
or nonprime integers, and even worse tools for working with telemetry
data. OTOH, if you want to enter credit card numbers as strings of 16
numerals without spaces or hyphens, format the cells with the Text
number format before entering them, then work with them as text, which
is how you'd need to work with them using arbitrary precision add-ins.

 

[Opinicus]

What are you doing that requires more than 15 decimal digits?
Spreadsheets are horrible tools for working with large prime numbers
or nonprime integers

You sort of hit the nail on the head there... ;-)

I'm playing around with the products of large prime multiplication and the
first tool that came to mind was Excel.

 

[Jerry W. Lewis]

A better (freely available) tool for the job would be Maxima
http://maxima.sourceforge.net/

Jerry

:
....

 

[Bruce Sinclair]

Dont think you can go beyond 15 digits of precision in Excel, could be
wrong tho.

... and given that computers only usually store numbers (usually decimal) as
the nearest binary approximation, why would you trust any 'extra precision'
that you got ?
Suggest using a specialist program that uses the calculator standard BCD
encoding or similar - something accurate - before worrying about extra
precision.

 

[Jerry W. Lewis]

A couple of Excel add-ins that support user specified numeric precision are
http://digilander.libero.it/foxes/index.htm
http://precisioncalc.com/

But I would still argue that Maxima (or comparable commercial programs like
Maple and Mathematica) would be more appropriate.

Jerry

 

[Harlan Grove]

(e-mail address removed) (Bruce Sinclair)
wrote...
....

.. and given that computers only usually store numbers (usually decimal) as
the nearest binary approximation, why would you trust any 'extra precision'
that you got ?

As OP has already responded, working with large prime numbers.
Apparently you're not aware of encryption algorithms based on large
primes, and also unaware of arbitrary precision software generally.

Suggest using a specialist program that uses the calculator standard BCD
encoding or similar - something accurate - before worrying about extra
precision.

Only an old mainframer would propose something as inefficient as BCD.
More evidence you're not familiar with arbitrary precision software.
Take a look at

http://gmplib.org/

for one example.

 

[Bruce Sinclair]

(e-mail address removed) (Bruce Sinclair)
wrote...
....

As OP has already responded, working with large prime numbers.
Apparently you're not aware of encryption algorithms based on large
primes, and also unaware of arbitrary precision software generally.


Only an old mainframer would propose something as inefficient as BCD.
More evidence you're not familiar with arbitrary precision software.
Take a look at

http://gmplib.org/
for one example.

Aware of encryption algorithms in a 'know they exist and vaguely how
they work' way.
"Arbitrary precision" means nothing to me, no, so thanks.