Excel Manuals

[sanha926]

Last winter I rushed through a bookstore looking for a manual to teach me some of the basics of Microsoft's Excel program, and ended buying Curtis D. Frye's 'Microsoft Approved' manual called 'Step by Step: Microsoft Office Excel 2007'.

In short, I ended very disappointed with this purchase. It seems as though the book caters more to people who want to learn how to construct fancy presentations for corporate boardrooms than it does to those who want an introduction to the program's basic features (despite the basic sounding 'step by step' title).

Anyone have recommendations for good Excel manuals? I browsed through the 'Excel 2007 for Dummies' book the other day and it surprisingly looks quite good - at least much better than the book I have.

[julianwells]

(a) An obvious question to ask is "what are you hoping to do with Excel?"

(b) And an obvious follow-up, given any particular answer to (a), is "is there some more suitable tool for doing it?"

If the answer to (a) is "statistical analysis", then the answer to (b) is "undoubtedly!", since Excel has been the subject of continuing adverse comment in statitistical computing circles for many years (not least for the quality of its internal help files).

[Jonathan Nitzan]

Those with access to university databases can find free electronic books on Excel, as well as on other programming packages, here:

1. Books 24x7
2. Safari Books Online

[sanha926]

(a) An obvious question to ask is "what are you hoping to do with Excel?"

(b) And an obvious follow-up, given any particular answer to (a), is "is there some more suitable tool for doing it?"

If the answer to (a) is "statistical analysis", then the answer to (b) is "undoubtedly!", since Excel has been the subject of continuing adverse comment in statitistical computing circles for many years (not least for the quality of its internal help files).

Yes Julian, I plan to use it for statistical analysis. I'm aware of Excel's poor reputation, but it's the only option I've been exposed to thus far. Any recommendations for more useful tools?

[uma]

Yes Julian, I plan to use it for statistical analysis. I'm aware of Excel's poor reputation, but it's the only option I've been exposed to thus far. Any recommendations for more useful tools?

R

http://www.r-project.org/

Free as in "free beer" (GNU), developed by leading statisticians, excellent quality graphics (much better than Excel). Good chances that any data analysis functionality you'll need in your life is already there or available as a downloadable package. If not, help yourself, as it is also a full blown programming language. Requires some time to get into though, but there is a wealth of online and offline info available. Well worth the time. Once being accustomed, be sure also to check out the tools for econometrics.

http://cran.r-project.org/web/views/Econometrics.html
http://www.rmetrics.org/

Here is some advocacy, comparing the use of proper tools (like R) with the use of spreadsheets for statistical analysis ("Spreadsheet addiction" end of page under menu point "Finance").

http://www.burns-stat.com/

Cheers
Ulf

[Scott]

Yes Julian, I plan to use it for statistical analysis. I'm aware of Excel's poor reputation, but it's the only option I've been exposed to thus far. Any recommendations for more useful tools?

You may wish to check out Sun`s OpenOffice suite. Free download, with everything MS Office offers, including spreadsheet program. Supposed to be an improvement on MS.

[uma]

You may wish to check out Sun`s OpenOffice suite. Free download, with everything MS Office offers, including spreadsheet program. Supposed to be an improvement on MS.

Gnumeric is worth mentioning, too.
http://projects.gnome.org/gnumeric/

And if you want to combine spreadsheet with decent statistics software, there are ways to combine R with Excel or OOCalc:
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wik ... umentation
http://rcom.univie.ac.at/server/doc/RExcel.html

(Haven't used them, though)