How to Use Excel
Microsoft Excel is easy to use and has very many features so the more you use it the more you learn. The Excel spreadsheet has great documentation through the built-in help menu. Here's a good beginner's Excel Tutorial (more info) for an overall feel of what Excel can do and to help someone start using the application.
We also have a collection of Example Excel Activities that show how Excel can be used in class. There are introductory activities that focus more on the mechanics of using Excel in science context as well as more advanced activities which assume more knowledge of Excel and use it as a tool to explore more in-depth concepts.
Other Useful References
- Intro to Excel is one of the handouts available from the Shodor Computational Science Institute . There are also two examples of using Excel linked at the bottom of the Intro page.
- Numerical Modeling with Spreadsheets: Microsoft Excel ( This site may be offline. ) Excel lessons developed by Ken Abernethy, Furman University, Greenville, SC.
- Resources for spreadsheet modeling. (more info) From Pat Cooney of Millersville University, Millersville, PA.
- Excel Tutorial (more info) designed by Brad James of the University of South Dakota is a very good basic tutorial on using Microsoft Excel. It provides students basic background info and is a useful reference for beginners. It's mostly reading with little interactivity. It is not a prerequisite to the activities above but is a good reference.
- Resources Graphing Tutorial: Graphing with Excel (more info) Basics. This site includes lessons titles such as: Data input into cells, Creating a scatter plot and line graph. Advanced: Bar graphs and histograms, Importing text files, Final formatting, Regression lines, Superimposing graphs, Descriptive statistics, Selecting data for display.
- Graphing Your Data Using Excel (more info) An Excel tutorial written by Andrew T. Gannon of Birmingham-Southern College, Birmingham AL.
- This Template for Using Functions in an Intro Geology Class (Acrobat (PDF) 144kB Apr18 05) was generated at a 2002 NAGT workshop on Teaching Quantitative Skills in a Geoscience Context. This is especially helpful in designing questions and activities for students. Other information and activities can be found on the Teaching Quantitative Skills in the Geosciences website.
- DISCUS (more info) and DISCUSS, Discovering Important Statistical Concepts Using SpreadSheets (more info) . Both created by Neville Hunt and Sidney Tyrrell 1995 School of Mathematical and Information Sciences , Coventry University, CV1 5FB, UK. These sites have downloadable Excel documents that can serve as turorials, examples, and templates.
- Excel Cheat Sheet (Acrobat (PDF) 94kB Jan12 06) a two-page document with the basics of using Excel from Sean Fox at Carleton College. Appropriate for college science students.