Apart from a brief introductory chapter, the book does not attempt to instruct readers on how to use a particular spreadsheet to obtain a particular result. In addition, large numbers of non-academic spreadsheet users seem to design excellent spreadsheet applications without much further instruction than this. While the book can be used with any spreadsheet, the presentation is best suited to a Windows-based spreadsheet, and in practice, after the first chapter, the authors refer explicitly to Microsoft Excel for Windows. The book s next nine chapters treat graphical presentation of data, measures of central tendency and of dispersion, frequency distributions, probability distributions, the binomial and Poisson distributions, applications of the binomial and Poisson, the uniform, exponential and normal distributions, and the central limit theorem. The style of writing is clear and cool, and the spreadsheet approach means that algebraic expressions are presented sparingly than is usual.
Integrals appear, but only informally.
Each chapter contains perhaps a dozen applied examples and half a dozen solved exercises on the average. The level which the book reaches is indicated by the adjacent screen shot based on Table 13.7 and Figures 13.8-13.9. Given raw data x and y a linear fit is defined in terms of parameters a and b. The parameter a is defined in terms of b, and of the means of x and y, so that the residuals will sum to 0. Finally, Microsoft Excel Solver is used to minimised the sum of squared residuals in terms of b, with the displayed results and plots.