Does the cutting of a spring make it softer or harder?

[cj]

Thanks everyone for their replies. I did cut the rear springs and the car felt much stiffer. I still may be wrong since i also changed the rear shocks to harder ones (Tokico HTS).

From what i've read, to measure the stiffness of a lienaer spring one would need the following parameters:

1. wire diameter
2. coil diameter
3. number of active springs
4. "modulus of rigidity" - a factors that concerns material physical property - but in the case of cutting it's value is constant

I do not know the exact equation, but while trying different on-line calculators I noticed that if you change only the "number of active coils" (meaning you have cut some) then the math result is a stiffer spring.

For illustration i've uploaded an Excell model bellow: