Microsoft KB Archive/161282

= NORMSINV Function May Return Incorrect Result =

Article ID: 161282

Article Last Modified on 8/17/2005

-

APPLIES TO


 * Microsoft Excel 97 Standard Edition
 * Microsoft Excel 95 Standard Edition
 * Microsoft Excel 5.0 Standard Edition

-



This article was previously published under Q161282



SYMPTOMS
When you use the NORMSINV worksheet function in Microsoft Excel, the function may return an incorrect result of either -5000000 or 5000000.



CAUSE
This problem occurs if the probability argument of the NORMSINV function has a value greater than zero and less than 0.0000003, or a value greater than or equal to 0.9999997 and less than 1. For example, the following table lists formulas that return incorrect NORMSINV results.

  This formula                Returns

=NORMSINV(0.0000002)       -5000000 =NORMSINV(0.000000299999)  -5000000 =NORMSINV(0.9999997)        5000000



STATUS
Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed at the beginning of this article.



MORE INFORMATION
The NORMSINV function in Microsoft Excel returns the inverse of the standard normal cumulative distribution, where the distribution has a mean of zero and a standard deviation of one. The NORMSINV function accepts a single argument, probability, which must have a value greater than zero and less than 1.

Although all values between zero and one are acceptable probability values, the NORMSINV function returns an incorrect result when the probability value is less than 0.0000003 or greater than or equal to 0.9999997.

Additional query words: 5.0 7.0 97 XL97 XL

Keywords: kbbug kbpending KB161282

-

[mailto:TECHNET@MICROSOFT.COM Send feedback to Microsoft]

© Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.