Statistics with Excel (2nd Edition) - Softcover

Dretzke, Beverly Jean

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0130223573 ISBN 13: 9780130223579

Publisher: Prentice Hall, 2001

Synopsis

This step-by-step Excel manual is designed for those who desire to learn how to effectively use Excel for data analysis. Its availability, easy-to-understand, basic spreadsheet operations, and analysis tools make Excel a superb software package to carry out statistical analyses. Expanded coverage of graphing and regression analysis. Use of Excel (instead of hand-held calculators) for “number crunching.” Coverage of more complex analysis that can be carried out with StatBox software. Add in Disk included. For a variety of disciplines, including mathematics, the social sciences, and business. Can be used by data analysts who wish to use Excel to record, manipulate, and analyze their data set.

About this title

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Preface

The first edition of Statistics with Microsoft® Excel was prepared in 1997 and published in 1998. Since that time, the Office 2000 version of Microsoft® Excel became available. Although Excel 2000 works on the same principles as Excel 97, there are slight differences with respect to the appearance of some of the dialog boxes. For users of this manual who rely greatly on screen prints as a means of following along and checking the accuracy of their work, I felt it was necessary to update these to the current version. Therefore, the screen prints appearing in this manual were obtained on computers utilizing Excel 2000. Instructions were revised to reflect any differences. In addition, with Excel 2000, Pivot Tables can be constructed in a mare interactive manner, and I included some instructions on this in Chapter 12.

During the past three years, I have used Statistics with Microsoft® Excel in all my introductory statistics courses. Feedback received from students led to some layout and content revisions. For example, in an attempt to make the instructions easier to follow, I numbered the steps, rather than using bullets, and used wider spacing. I also reduced the size of some of the sample data sets and included more complete instructions on how to create histograms and bar graphs.

Introductory statistics students traditionally make frequent use of a hand-held calculator to carry out numerous exercises in which they apply the formulas for the mean, variance, standard deviation, z-scores, and so on. Rather than using a hand-held calculator for these computations, however, I preferred that my students use Excel. I found that the earlier manual did not give sufficient guidance in using formulas for these tasks. Therefore, I included a section in Chapter 3 of this edition that provides instructions specifically for these applications.

Several users of the first edition sent e-mail messages in which they made comments or asked questions about the manual and Excels statistical analysis capabilities. I was very surprised to receive messages from Europe and Africa as well as the United States, and I am very grateful for this input. Some of the revisions and additions in the second edition were made in response to these messages. For example, this edition includes a detailed section on dummy coding of qualitative variables in regression analysis and an explanation of how to use Excel to rank data and compute a Spearman rank correlation coefficient.

Much of the work on this manual was completed while I was a visiting professor at Kansai Gaidai University in Hirakata City, Osaka, Japan. I am grateful to Dean Hajime Yamamoto and the staff of the Center for International Education for providing excellent facilities and a very congenial atmosphere.

I wish to thank Kathy Boothby-Sestak and Quincy McDonald of Prentice-Hall for their assistance. I am grateful to Eric Dretzke for technical support regarding computer hardware and software. Special thanks goes to Kathleen S. Finder, an information-processing consultant at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire for her invaluable guidance.

If you have any comments or suggestions that you would like to make regarding this manual, please send me a message.

Beverly J. Dretzke
(dretzkbj@uwec.edu)

Edition details

• Publisher: Prentice Hall
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0130223573
• ISBN 13: 9780130223579
• Binding: Spiral-bound
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 257