Abstract #300029

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JSM 2003 Abstract #300029
Activity Number: 446
Type: Contributed
Date/Time: Thursday, August 7, 2003 : 8:30 AM to 10:20 AM
Sponsor: Section on Statistical Computing
Abstract - #300029
Title: Some Comments on the Use of Excel in Statistics
Author(s): Yu-Chi Chang*+
Companies: University of Notre Dame
Address: , Notre Dame, IN, 46556,
Keywords: p-value ; Excel ; Standardized residual
Abstract:

Microsoft Excel is useful for a broad range of statistical applications. We first demonstrate some examples in which Excel can be used to simplify the organization of data and the calculation of probabilities in the birthday problem. Next, we show the advantages of using the Function Wizard to calculate p-values and critical points of a two-sided hypothesis test of the population mean. The calculation is trivial when the variance is known but needs some improvement when the variance is unknown. When calculating the statistics of two variables, Excel makes mistakes in calculating the covariance and the sign of correlation coefficient and gives inconsistent answers for the sign of the linear regression coefficient. Finally, some suggestions are given for fixing and improving Excel in the hypothesis test and in linear regression analysis, and a correction on the use of standardized residual is given.

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