Microsoft Excel is a versatile program

for handling a variety of data formats.

Numerical and financial data is

commonly entered into Excel, which

allows entries to be organized in rows

and columns.

Excel provides an array of formulas for

analyzing this data once it is entered.

Statistical formulas are particularly

common in Excel, and the program

has many built-in functions for

constructing common calculations. It

is possible to create statistical formulas

quickly and easily in Excel.

1. Open Excel. Add numerical data to the spreadsheet, or load a completed spreadsheet.

2. Click in an empty cell where you wish to place a statistical formula. Any cell can analyze data from any other group of cells. The formulas do not need to be in close proximity to the data.

3. Click the "fx" button on the Excel

toolbar. This button appears in front of

the long white formula bar unique to

Excel. A pop-up window will appear

after you click the button.

4. Click the drop-down menu labeled

"Select a category" in the pop-up window.

Choose the "Statistical" category. The

function list below this menu will change to

reflect all the built-in Excel functions that

may be used in statistical formulas.

5. Choose a statistical function. Common

statistical formulas employed by Excel

users include "Average," "Median" and

"Count." However, there are more

complicated functions available for

advanced statisticians. As you click on

each function in the list, a summary of

that function appears at the bottom of

the window to explain the function's

purpose and how it is used. Click the

"OK" button once you have selected the

desired function.

6. Configure the statistical formula using the formula input box that appears after the function is selected. For example, for the "Median" function, two number fields appear. For most Excel functions, you can enter a number, a cell reference pointing to that number, or a cell range. For "Median," enter a separate number in each field, or click in a field then click on the spreadsheet to enter a particular cell's contents. Drag over a range of numbered cells on the spreadsheet to quickly include a collection of data in the formula.

7. Press the "OK" button. The statistical

formula is created and the results

display in the selected cell.

Many statistical methods are not available in Excel.

Commonly-used statistics and methods NOT available within Excel include:

* Boxplots

* p-values for the correlation coefficient

* Spearman’s and Kendall’s rank correlation coefficients

* 2-way ANOVA with unequal sample sizes (unbalanced data)

* Multiple comparison tests (post-hoc

tests following ANOVA)

* p-values for two-way ANOVA

* Levene’s test for equal variance

* Nonparametric tests, including rank-

sum and Kruskal-Wallis

* Scatterplot arrays or brushing

* Principal components or other

multivariate methods

* GLM (generalized linear models)

* Survival analysis methods

* Regression diagnostics, such as

Mallow’s Cp and PRESS

(it does compute adjusted r-squared)

* Durbin-Watson test for serial correlation

* LOESS smooths

http://www.practicalstats.com/xlsstats/excelstats.html

If you need to develop complex statistical or engineering analyses, you can save steps and time by using the Analysis ToolPak. You provide the data and parameters for each analysis, and the tool uses the appropriate statistical or engineering macro functions to calculate and display the results in an output table. Some tools generate charts in addition to output tables.

The Analysis ToolPak includes the tools described below. To access these tools, click Data Analysis in the Analysis group on the Data tab. If the Data Analysis command is not available, you need to load the Analysis ToolPak add-in program.

For a description of each tool, click on a

tool name in the following list.

Anova

Correlation

Covariance

Descriptive Statistics

Exponential Smoothing

F-Test Two-Sample for Variances