Calc statistical accuracy

Hi all,

This is a question more from curiosity than anything.

Today I was reading that the Journal of Computational Statistics and Data
Analysis was not at all happy with Microsoft Excel 2003, stating that:

"Given Microsoft’s track record, we recommend that no statistical procedure
be used unless Microsoft demonstrates that the procedure in question has
been correctly programmed, e.g., by the use of test datasets from
textbooks, or by comparison with another software package." [1]

What interests me the most is that they gave some specific advise on how to
test statistical software. In particular they stated that NIST has a
Statistical Reference Dataset that can be used to test statistical
software. [2]

I found the datasets on the NIST website [3]. They have a number of tests
for ANOVA, Linear Regressions, Markov Chain Monte Carlo, Nonlinear
Regression and Univariate Summary Statistics.

I was wondering if we've done any work on testing Calc against these
datasets?

Chris

1. http://www.pages.drexel.edu/~bdm25/excel2007.pdf
2. http://www.itl.nist.gov/div898/strd/
3. http://www.itl.nist.gov/div898/strd/general/dataarchive.html