From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: Thorsten Jolitz <tjolitz@googlemail.com>
Subject: Re: Distinguish between blank and zero in org-mode spreadsheet
Date: Mon, 10 Dec 2012 23:57:23 +0100
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Bob Newell <bobnewell@bobnewell.net> writes:

> The problem obviously revolves around a blank cell being interpreted
> as zero. That's all well and good, and quite correct, but makes
> distinguishing blank and explicit zero more difficult.

I don't think thats "well and good, and quite correct", otherwise all
the statistics packages wouldn't have the notion of 'Na' (not available)
or 'NaN' (Not a Number). I was bothered by the same problem like you,
and its makes life quite complicated when trying to write formulas. 

AFAIL calc actually has the notion of NaN, but it doesn't work in Org
tables, at least when I tried (quite some time ago). 
This would be a great improvement, if table formulas actually could
reference 'empty cells'. 

-- 
cheers,
Thorsten