Bug 160835

Correction: the same string appears in two other places, too:
https://translations.documentfoundation.org/translate/libo_ui-master/scmessages/en/?q=a+basic+total+population&sort_by=-priority%2Cposition&checksum=

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_population>

(In reply to ady from comment #2)
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_population>

Yes, I know what "population" means in statistics. What I don't know is what "basic total population" is supposed to mean.

IMHO, it would help if you could link to the actual Help content (i.e. function) we are talking about. I mean that "Value 1; value 2; ... are arguments representing a sample taken from a basic total population" sounds as the description of a "ValueN" argument of some specific Calc function, probably part of the Statistical Category of functions.

Calc functions: AVERAGEA, STDEVA and VARA - cf. the attached juxtaposition (UI vs Help).

Created attachment 193879 [details]
Calc functions in UI and Help

Rafael, what do you think? I feel like this could be simplified to just "population".

The string exists in OOo 3.3, but doesn't mean anything to me either, and an online search seems to confirms that it does not have any special meaning in stats.

Elsewhere:
- MS Excel uses "a sample of a population"[1][2].
- Google Docs only says it's a sample without having to mention "from a population". (Only uses "population" to refer to other functions that consider the whole population instead of a sample.)[2]

[1]: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/stdeva-function-5ff38888-7ea5-48de-9a6d-11ed73b29e9d
[2]: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/vara-function-3de77469-fa3a-47b4-85fd-81758a1e1d07
[3]: https://support.google.com/docs/answer/3094055

Created attachment 194180 [details]
Compatibility issue with AVERAGE in Calc vs Excel

In short, indeed this is simply a "population". The main difference between AVERAGE and AVERAGEA is how logical values (TRUE / FALSE) or empty text is treated. See below:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/averagea-function-a5ae0aea-11ad-4bba-856a-031e08567df0

The problem is that there I've just detected a compatibility issue in LO Calc, where the function AVERAGE does not work as in Excel. See attached image for an example.

Apparently, Calc's AVERAGE works like AVERAGEA in Excel (beware that the Excel file in the screenshot is using pt-BR, hence the formulas are translated).

Can anyone else confirm? Should we treat this compatibility issue on a separate ticket?

This patch fixes the affected strings:

https://gerrit.libreoffice.org/c/core/+/167688

I guess we'd better treat this compatibility issue in a separate ticket. Anyways, if anyone can confirm it, please let me know.

Rafael Lima committed a patch related to this issue.
It has been pushed to "master":

https://git.libreoffice.org/core/commit/8d16b7a9e6dad1c3590c74af3eee952bd8fc3284

tdf#160835 Fix the use of "population" in Calc functions

It will be available in 24.8.0.

The patch should be included in the daily builds available at
https://dev-builds.libreoffice.org/daily/ in the next 24-48 hours. More
information about daily builds can be found at:
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Testing_Daily_Builds

Affected users are encouraged to test the fix and report feedback.

(In reply to Rafael Lima from comment #8)

> Apparently, Calc's AVERAGE works like AVERAGEA in Excel (beware that the
> Excel file in the screenshot is using pt-BR, hence the formulas are
> translated).
> 
> Can anyone else confirm? Should we treat this compatibility issue on a
> separate ticket?

I think that they work as expected. The difference is, most probably, that Excel deals with the boolean category in a different way than numeric values, whereas in Calc the boolean category is treated/considered as numeric values – just as percentage, scientific and other categories are treated as numeric values too.