James Silverton -

The NORMINV and RAND (and some other) worksheet functions were improved in
Excel 2003. For information, browse to www.microsoft.com, and search for
"excel rand norminv" (without the quotes), or search for something similar.

- Mike
http://www.MikeMiddleton.com


"James Silverton" wrote in message
...
Eric wrote on Tue, 24 Apr 2007 10:00:02 -0700:

E "johnny vino" wrote:

?? I'm trying to obtain the following:
??
?? A 30 column x 1000 row table of normal distribution of
?? random item responses ranging from 1-4.
??
?? I'm not sure how to control the "Normal" output of the #
?? generator, and I can't figure out how to generate only
?? natural numbers (no decimals). I can format the numbers
?? to 0 decimal places, but the "truth" of the numberis still
?? listed as 3.1223.. which isn't a response option on my
?? tests. (that's a joke)

Sorry, I missed the word "normal". I suspect that suggestions using
NORMINV could be used to get *adequate* values even if it is not the
greatest generator for normal distributions. I'm not an expert but I'm
going to have to take a look to see if the problem has been discussed in
the statistical literature.

James Silverton
Potomac, Maryland

E-mail, with obvious alterations: not.jim.silverton.at.comcast.not