Bob Hayden wrote; >I wonder what the students will do >after graduation? I fear they will abandon coding everything by hand >and just use the built in Excel functions. In other words, this use >of Excel may be a useful pedagogical tool, but I don't think it >provides students with a practical way of getting data analyzed >outside of school Bob is right, some students will be "seduced by the darkside" of MS Excel. It is often quicker and easier to use an Excel statistical function than to use the long-hand method. However, students should be warned (regularly) that the functions may give incorrect results. This can be demonstrated with examples. Furthermore, we should make it easy as possible for students to use Excel the right way. During their course, students should generate a collection of spreadsheets which are well-designed and avoid the use of the Excel stats routines. These can serve as templates to help produce spreadsheets for similar analyses in the future. Using a template should save time and act as an aide memoire. Dr Graham D. Smith Psychology Division School of Behavioural Studies University College Northampton Boughton Green Road Northampton NN2 7AL Tel (01604) 735500 Ext 2393 Email [EMAIL PROTECTED] ----- Original Message ----- From: Bob Hayden <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: EdStat-L <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Tuesday, November 30, 1999 9:31 PM Subject: Excel > ----- Forwarded message from Graham D Smith ----- > > [Charset iso-8859-1 unsupported, filtering to ASCII...] > I agree with much of what has been said about the shortcomings of Excel. > After all this strand of discussion was arose from problems with its ranking > procedure. However, I don't think that users should rely on Excel's > statistical functions or analysis tools. Rather, I think that users should > treat a spreadsheet like "automated pencil-and-paper". To perform a repeated > measures t test, for example rather one would get the spreadsheet to > generate difference scores, would calculate their standard error by "long > hand" (again not using the Excel formula). The most complex functions > required are +, -, *, /, ^2, logs etc. In the process one gets a good look > at the data and a feel for it. > > ----- End of forwarded message from Graham D Smith ----- > > Actually, I use spreadsheets to create handouts along these lines, and > write spreadsheet-like Minitab macros to crank out detailed answer > sheets for computations students do by hand. Because the original > post was about a built-in Excel function, I thought the discussion was > about teaching statistics using those. > > For the approach described above, I wonder what the students will do > after graduation? I fear they will abandon coding everything by hand > and just use the built in Excel functions. In other words, this use > of Excel may be a useful pedagogical tool, but I don't think it > provides students with a practical way of getting data analyzed > outside of school. > > > _ > | | Robert W. Hayden > | | Department of Mathematics > / | Plymouth State College MSC#29 > | | Plymouth, New Hampshire 03264 USA > | * | Rural Route 1, Box 10 > / | Ashland, NH 03217-9702 > | ) (603) 968-9914 (home) > L_____/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] > fax (603) 535-2943 (work) > -- > > > _ > | | Robert W. Hayden > | | Department of Mathematics > / | Plymouth State College MSC#29 > | | Plymouth, New Hampshire 03264 USA > | * | Rural Route 1, Box 10 > / | Ashland, NH 03217-9702 > | ) (603) 968-9914 (home) > L_____/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] > fax (603) 535-2943 (work)
