Thanks for the suggestion, it is educational.

From one of Jerry's posts, it seems that excel may/may not apply a fudge
factor when nesting functions -or am I misunderstanding?

I was aware of the 15 digit limits and the binary fraction issue, but, as
Harlan stated, there's no apparent reason for Combin to apply the fudge
factor in this case.



"Biff" wrote:

That's the "fudge factor" Harlan was talking about.

The result is not EXACTLY zero but the difference is so extremely small that
Excel "fudges" the result to be 0.

But if A8 = COMBIN(9,3)-84 it appears to properly return 0

Try this:

=(COMBIN(9,3)-84)=0

Jerry Lewis has explained that a test for true equality must be done this
way. Look for some of his posts where he gets into great detail about this.
It's really complex and quite educational.

Biff

"JMB" wrote in message
...
But if A8 = COMBIN(9,3)-84 it appears to properly return 0
and if A9 = MOD(A8,1)

it also appears to properly return 0.

"Harlan Grove" wrote:

Biff wrote...
this is still a bug. COMBIN should *only*
return integers or error values.

I agree and had always assumed as much. This little exercise proves
otherwise.

=MOD((COMBIN(9,3)-84),1)

Returns 1.
....

Actually, it returns 0.999999999999986. And don't get me started on
MOD.

With all boils in need of lancing in Excel, what does Microsoft do?
Give it a nose job.