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