I have a scoring spreadsheet where column A is the player ranking, B is the
name, and S the point total. I have just noticed that, for a pair of players
with the exact same score, Excel is assigning different ranks. Here's an
excerpt with just those columns:

Rank Player Total
1 JohnF 87
2 Adam 79
3 James 77
3 MarkSu 77
3 Nick 77
6 Tom 76
6 CharlesB 76
8 Jennifer 68
9 Maurice 55
10 Jason 50
11 Kim 48
12 JohnW 43
13 JimW 36
14 Andrew 34
15 Casey 31
16 Paul 22
17 Tim 20
19 Ian 19
18 JoeN 19
20 Eli 18
20 Hal 18
22 Jeremy 13
23 Nancy 12
24 Anthony 9
24 Geoff 9
26 Bob 8
27 Steph 6
28 LizD 4
[Omitted remaining rows up to 52]

As you can see, Excel correctly ranks players tied for 3rd, 6th, 20th, and
24th. But Ian and JoeN, both with 19 points, get ranked differently.

- This is not a "sliding rank range" problem caused by improper formula
definition; The formulae for the first two data rows, for example, are:

=IF(S2=0,"",RANK(S2,S$2:S$52))
=IF(S3=0,"",RANK(S3,S$2:S$52))

- I highlighted both 19-point scores in their cells' formula bar and pressed
F9 to ensure they didn't vary by some small amount. In both cases, Excel
displayed 19 as the calculated value.

- I don't know if this is relevant, but there is another problem on the
sheet, where equal percentage values are shown by Excel to vary in their
least significant digit (0.583333333333333 vs. 0.583333333333334).
Highlighting & calculating parts of the formulae shows the first cell to be
computing 49/84 and the second 35/60; that's equal to 7/12 multiplied by the
same number (5 or 7) in both the numerator and denominator, which gives the
same result. (0.583...3). Perhaps Excel is starting to act screwy on me?

Any hints? Thanks.