Microsoft Excel Introduction

Today you will learn how useful Microsoft Excel can be. Excel is a spreadsheet program that can create tables and graphs with a given set of data. During your time in Humanities High School, you will find this program valuable for printing out neat graphs of your science and math data.

Scenario:

You, the Statistician, have been asked by the Bureau of the Census to make some observations about the 2000 population count from Census Day, April 1, 2000. Below is the data collected from the Census web site- http://www.census.gov.

Step 1

Open Microsoft Excel and copy/paste this Census Data information into the program.

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Step 2

Find the total population of the United States on April 1, 2000 and April 1, 1990.

Hint: Use the sum function to help you.

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Step 3

Calculate the numeric change in population between the years 2000 and 1990.

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Step 4

Using the numeric change, find the percent change in population.

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Step 5

Find the State Ranks for 2000 and 1990. The state with the highest rank has the largest population and the state with the lowest rank has the lowest population.

Do not manually rank the states- let Excel do it for you. Remember- District of Columbia is NOT a state!

Hint: Use the sort feature .

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Step 6

Compare the population of any two states of your choice. Highlight the data you wish to compare and follow the instructions in the chart wizard .