desktop-packages team mailing list archive

["Bastiaan J. Braams" <891812@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The presumed cause of the bug is that the multinomial is computed as a
ratio of factorials; this would indeed cause an overflow when the sum of
the arguments exceeds 170. Please note that for the implementation of
the Binomial in LibreOffice Calc (function COMBIN) no such restriction
applies; it is computed carefully to avoid unnecessary overflow.

Please note also that the bug with multinomial would be almost trivial
to fix.

A recurrence for computing the multinomial function as a product of
binomials may be found in the description of the multinomial function in
the Sage mathematics system:

http://www.sagemath.org/doc/reference/sage/rings/arith.html#sage.rings.arith.multinomial

The associated 5-line Python code by Gabriel Ebner may be found here:

http://trac.sagemath.org/sage_trac/attachment/ticket/3132/trac3132-2.diff

I believe that this is a very natural way to compute the multinomial,
and it would completely remove the problem of unnecessary overflow.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/891812

Title:
  [Upstream] Calc: MULTINOMIAL only supports parameters up to 170

Status in LibreOffice Productivity Suite:
  Confirmed
Status in “libreoffice” package in Ubuntu:
  Triaged

Bug description:
  1)
  Lucid:
  lsb_release -rd
  Description:	Ubuntu 10.04.3 LTS
  Release:	10.04

  Oneiric:
  lsb_release -rd
  Description:	Ubuntu 11.10
  Release:	11.10

  2) 
  Lucid:
  apt-cache policy libreoffice-calc
  libreoffice-calc:
    Installed: 1:3.3.2-1ubuntu2~lucid1
    Candidate: 1:3.3.2-1ubuntu2~lucid1
    Version table:
   *** 1:3.3.2-1ubuntu2~lucid1 0
          500 http://ppa.launchpad.net/libreoffice/ppa/ubuntu/ lucid/main Packages
          100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

  Oneiric:
  apt-cache policy libreoffice-calc
  libreoffice-calc:
    Installed: 1:3.4.4-0ubuntu1~ppa1
    Candidate: 1:3.4.4-0ubuntu1~ppa1
    Version table:
   *** 1:3.4.4-0ubuntu1~ppa1 0
          500 http://ppa.launchpad.net/libreoffice/ppa/ubuntu/ oneiric/main i386 Packages
          100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
       1:3.4.3-3ubuntu2 0
          500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ oneiric/main i386 Packages

  LibreOffice Calc 3.4.3, OOO340m1 (Build:302)

  
  3) What is expected to happen in a blank LibreOffice Calc document is when one types in a cell:

  =MULTINOMIAL(1000,0)

  it returns 1.

  4) What happens instead is it returns Err:502.

  More information about multinomial may be found at:
  http://help.libreoffice.org/Calc/Mathematical_Functions#MULTINOMIAL
  http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/excel-help/multinomial-HP005209186.aspx

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