Advanced Excel for Scientific Data Analysis

Excel is by far the most widely distributed data analysis software but few users are aware of its full powers. Advanced Excel For Scientific Data Analysis takes off from where most books dealing with scientific applications of Excel end. It focuses on three areas-least squares, Fourier transformation, and digital simulation-and illustrates these with extensive examples, often taken from the literature. It also includes and describes a number of sample macros and functions to facilitate common data analysis tasks. These macros and functions are provided in uncompiled, computer-readable, easily modifiable form; readers can therefore use them as starting points for making their own personalized data analysis tools. Detailed descriptions and sample applications of standard and specialized uses of least squares for fitting data to a variety of functions, including resolving multi-component spectra; standard processes such as calibration curves and extrapolation; custom macros for general "error" propagation, standard deviations of Solver results, weighted or equidistant least squares, Gram-Schmidt orthogonalization, Fourier transformation, convolution and deconvolution, time-frequency analysis, and data mapping. There are also worked examples showing how to use centering, the covariance matrix, imprecision contours, and Wiener filtering and custom functions for bisections, Lagrange interpolation, Euler and Runge-Kutta integration.

Robert de Levie is the author of more than 160 papers in analytical chemistry and electrochemistry, of an early Spreadsheet Workbook for Quantitative Chemical Analysis, McGraw-Hill, 1992; of a textbook on the Principles of Quantitative Chemical Analysis, McGraw-Hill 1997; of an Oxford Chemistry Primer on Aqueous Acid-Base Equilibria and Titrations, Oxford University Press, 1999; and most recently, of How to Use Excel in Analytical Chemistry, Cambridge University Press, 2001. He was born and raised in the Netherlands, earned his Ph.D. in physical chemistry at the University of Amsterdam, was a postdoctoral fellow with Paul Delahay in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and for 34 years taught analytical chemistry and electrochemistry at Georgetown University. For ten of those years, he was the US editor of the Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry. Now an emeritus professor, he lives on Orr's Island, and is associated with Bowdoin College in nearby Brunswick, Maine.