Start Microsoft Excel. You will see a blank grid. (Any free alternative like Google Spreadsheets or Open Office will also work with similar instructions.)

Let us use each row to record the outcome of one poll. Start labeling the rows, after skipping the first cell, as Poll1, Poll 2, and so on.

Then, after selecting the first two cells that you have typed, you can copy the pattern by dragging the small black square downward.

Now we do the same thing for labeling rows.

Now we go the cell corresponding to Poll 1, Response 1. We are going to use the RANDBETWEEN function to generate random numbers between any to integers. We start a function or equation with an = sign. We type =RANDBETWEEN(0,1) to indicate that we want a random number between 0 and 1.

After hitting Enter, we see that our random number is 0.

We copy this to the entire row by, again, dragging the small black square toward the left.

While the row is selected, we copy the function to the entire table by dragging the small black square downward.

We label the last column as Proportion. The proportion for each row will go here.

We use the AVERAGE function of Excel to find the proportion. Note that if the entries are either 1 or 0, then the row average is simply the proportion of 1s. After typing =AVERAGE( we select the range of cells, and press Enter.

Then again after selecting the top row’s proportion cell, by dragging the small square downward, we copy it to the rest of the cells.

Before we copy the table to the Word document, we may want to change its appearance, in order to make it more suitable for a Word document.

We select the top row. Right click and select Format cells.

From there, we go to the alignment menu, and enter 90 degrees, to make the text vertical.

After selecting the entire table, we may adjust the cell width.

And readjust the width of the first column to fit its entries.

Then we may add borders by clicking the small arrow to the right corresponding icon.

Then you can select, copy and paste it to the word processor.

Now we go back to the Excel document. We select the rightmost row of proportions, and copy it.

Next, we open a blank sheet. See the tabs at the bottom left where it says Sheet 1, Sheet 2, Sheet 3, and choose, for instance, Sheet 2. Then select the first column by clicking on the letter A. Then right click and choose “paste special”, and click on the “1 2 3” icon. This will ensure that the numbers are pasted, not the formula that generates them.

Now we are going to count the number of polls whose results are between 0.3 and 0.7. We are going to use the COUNTIF function for that. We type =COUNTIF( and then we select the range of cells. Then we write the criteria, which is “>0.30”. This will give us the number of cases that have a proportion larger than 0.3.

Finally, we subtract the number of cases that are larger than 0.7 from it, to find the number of cases that are between 0.3 and 0.7. Our formula is =COUNTIF(A2:A16, “>0.3”) - COUNTIF(A2:A16, “>0.7”).

We see that this number is 12, after hitting enter.