Technology Tip of the Week - January 31, 2006

Doing a Simple Calculation in Excel

One of the most powerful features of Excel is its ability to do calculations. One helpful illustration of a simple calculation in Excel is averaging quiz grades in an Excel grade book. Once you have all your grades entered, you may use Excel to quickly add up each student's quiz average.

1. In an empty column next to the last quiz column, type in the label "Quiz Average" in the top row. For this example, let's imagine that this column is column J.

2. For this example, let's imagine that your first student is in row 2. Click in the blank cell in column J in row 2, also known as J2. In order to tell Excel that you are planning on using a calculation in this cell you must first type in an equal sign as =. Now let's imagine that you have administered 6 quizzes and the scores are recorded in columns D through I. To add all these grades together you would type in the following:
=(d2+e2+f2+g2+h2+i2)

3. Wait... this will give you the total points of all the grades but now you have to divide by 6 (for the 6 quizzes) to get the average. To do this you would add a /6 to indicate that you want Excel to add all the grades together and then divide by 6. So now your formula looks like this:

=(d2+e2+f2+g2+h2+i2)/6

4. Press Enter to finish and you should now see the grade for the first student showing up in the cell.

5. Now you will need to copy the formula you typed in J2 down into the other remaining cells in column J. To do this, click on the cell with the formula (e.g., J2) to highlight it. Then click on Edit in the menu at the top of the page and select Copy. Click in the J3 cell, hold down the cursor and drag it down the rest of the student rows. At the last row let go of the cursor. Click on Edit and then select Paste. The new totals in the remaining cells should appear.

Pretty nifty, huh?

For more help with this feature or to try some more complicated calculations, please contact one of the faculty mentors - Tony Basilico (abasilico@ccri.edu) or Luis Malaret (lmalaret@ccri.edu) or one of the IT Instructional Support team (Norm Grant, Gene Grande or Linda Beith).

Website of the Week

PowerPoint in the Classroom a resource site for teachers.

Browse through this website for lots of ideas and materials using PowerPoint. Some of the materials are K-12 but some of the ideas and materials can translate to any class.

http://www.esu5.org/techteacher/powerpoint.htm

Find any good ideas on this website? Feel free to post your thoughts or opinions of the site in the Teaching Forum message board.

These tips are provided by the Department of Information Technology instructional support team. If you have any questions on these tips, or wish to offer your own, please feel free to contact Linda Beith at lbeith@ccri.edu. View an archive of past technology tips