Modicum of Microsoft Excel

Microsoft Excel is a powerful tool with great graphics package, however many of its operation are counterintuitive. The following examples could help you to overcame hurdles you might encounter when trying to generate and visualize statistical distributions.

 

The Standard Normal Distribution

Let us plot the standard normal distribution for the -3 to +3 argument using Microsoft Excel.

 

Click on column A1, type -3, and press the enter key, as

 

 

 

Click on -3 to reposition the cursor, as

 

 

 

Click on Edit, Fill, and Series to open dialog shown below

 

 

Clock on the columns radio button, set the step value to .5 and the stop value to 3, as

 

 

and click OK to generate the argument, as shown below

 

 

Reposition the cursor to B1, type in to the fx input field

 

=normdist(a1:a13,0,1,false)

 

and click on the green check mark which will appear on the left side of the above expression if it is correctly formed to enter the first value of the distribution, as

 

 

 

Press CTRL + C to copy the formula that is stored in the B1 cell, generating the visible .004432 value. Holding down the shift key and the down arrow, highlight cells B2 to B13

 

 

and type CTRL+V to copy the formula in B1 to cells B2:B13.

 

 

Highlight the abscissa and ordinate of the standard normal distribution in columns A and B

 

 

and click on the chart wizard

 

 

Click on XY (Scatter) and on the top thumbnail on the right

 

 

Click on Finish

 

 

 

The Arithmetic Mean

 

 

 

True Variance

 

 

True Standard Deviation

 

 

 

Unbiased Variance

 

 

 

Unbiased Standard Deviation

 

 

 

Copy a Variable

 

Highlight a variable to copy and press CTRL+C

 

 

Select a column into which you want to copy the selected variable

 

 

Click on Edit and Paste Special

 

 

Select the Values radio button and click on OK