Excel Scientific and Engineering Cookbook
by David M. Bourg

The unconfirmed error reports are from readers.  They have not yet been 
approved or disproved by the author or editor and represent solely the
opinion of the reader.

Here's a key to the markup:
        [page-number]: serious technical mistake
        {page-number}: minor technical mistake
        <page-number>: important language/formatting problem
        (page-number): language change or minor formatting problem
        ?page-number?: reader question or request for clarification

This page was updated April 14, 2008.


UNCONFIRMED  errors and comments from readers: 

(71)  second example (2-25);
Two reasons the Magnitude function can't work as printed:
1) VBA uses Sqr rather than sqrt
2) x and y haven't been declared as arguments of the function


(95)  next to last bullet point;
It does not help to say "You can perform calculations on your filtered data just as
you normally would."  This touches on a tricky feature of Excel where normal is not
obvious.  Performing calculations on filtered data will surprise many people.

Excel calculations ignore any filtering, whereas the casual user might expect Excel
to perform calculations only on visible data.


{158}  6th paragraph, before equation;
First, as the surrounding text suggests, this is a formula for computing the
"Spearman" rank correlation coefficient, not the "Pearson" rank correlation
coefficient.

Second, this formula is not valid in the general case; it is only correct when there
are no ties.  (For instance, see the entry for Spearman rank correlation coefficient
in Wikipedia.)


(161)  last paragraph;
In "The formula to use . . .", the second RANK( needs to be preceded by a plus sign
rather than a minus sign to get a reasonable result.


[226]  Figure 7-3;
I cannot calculate the inverse or transpose of the matrix C4:E6.  Is something
missing or an instruction left out?


{300} 2nd equation;
The equation is

f(t) = exp( -1/4 (t+1) )

The (t+1) should be squared.

This is known from the context of the book as well as Example 10-1 on the same page where the VBA code has (t+1)^2


(327) 1st line after equations;
in the equations the author states y' represents dy/dx in the equations. It is y, not y', that represents dy/dx and y' represents the acceleration. This typo caused me great confustion in interpreting the code.


[331] 4th equation (for dy4/dt);
In order to agree with the VBA code on p. 333 and the results shown in the chart on p. 336, the 2nd term of the equation should be preceded by a minus sign, rather than a plus sign.


{337} 1st equation;
The first equation is du^2/dt^2

Presumably this is meant to be d^2u/dt^2


(338) 1st equation;
The first equation is dy^2/dt

Presumably the superscript should be a subscript,
dy_2/dt (using _ to indicate subscript)