Spreadsheet 1

Click Here

Wow! This was challenging for me. For all the computer and internet activities I am decent at, somehow I've avoided Excel (and spreadsheets in general) entirely to this point.

(1)Downloading the spreadsheet was no problem. (2)Averaging columns in Excel was not difficult once I figured out where the Formula Tool was for Excel 2007.

=AVERAGE(C5:H5)

(3)Formatting the name and average of the highest scoring student was no different
than doing it in Word. (4)Averaging the assignments was no different from averaging the grades other than it was a column average rather than a row average.

=AVERAGE(C4:C18)

(5 & 6)This was just a matter of subtracting the highest score (93) out of 100.
Special thanks to Mark for help with that curve score formula! (7)That Pivot tool is Excel is really neat, too bad it does not transfer to Google Docs. (8)Making K3 shaded black was again no different than in Word...right click the cell, select background color and change to black. (9 & 10) I did not have any trouble getting the Spreadsheet uploaded to Google other than that my PC had saved it to the download folder instead of the documents folder. Again, good thing I'd read that the heading angles would not transfer. (11)Inserting a column to the left of the original averages was no trouble...at first. (12 & 13) It worked fine until I pasted in the new student names in that column and moved the "curve" column. When I did, because of the curving formula I'd used (added specific cell values that were no longer there), Google Docs gave me a "circular dependency error" on all my adjusted grades. Thanks again Mark for helping me get that right. (14)I really like the chart tool on Google Spreadsheets. That was a really easy way to add a graphic to a set of calculations.

I must say that I am glad that we will not likely use Excel or Google Spreadsheets to do our grades. There are commercial programs like Live Grades and others that are more user friendly. That said, it is always good to learn something new.

Toss more words up here later,
Fred