Spreadsheets - now statistically significant!

I was going over some information the other day in one of my classes and the information was in relation to spreadsheets. I got to thinking about the wondrous tool that is spreadsheets. Spreadsheets really allow you to manage a large number of numerical data very efficiently. The databaseing, the manipulating, the analysis… oh my, the analysis, would all be so much easier with a spreadsheet. For example, as a biology teacher, if I have 4 classes of 35 students per class and want them to analyze the amount of eggs that a frog lays with variations in ambient temperature, the data would be best managed by a spreadsheet. An average leopard frog lays about 6000 eggs per spawn (www.dnr.state.wi.us). Taking ambient temperature variations into account and summarizing the data between all 35 students would be a tremendous task made simple by a spreadsheet. Perhaps if group work was used, the pooling of all 4 classes’ data would give more statistical significance to the collected data. The spreadsheet would have the temperature conditions on the down a column, and the number of eggs counted by each student, or group of students, arranged in rows after the appropriate column. Then the average number of eggs counted per temperature condition can be averaged, and the results be compared against other temperature conditions. Furthermore, after the students, or the teacher collects all of the data points, a simple graphical interpretation of the results can also be applied to summarize the data. So say that there are 5 temperature conditions, that is 700 data points, I couldn’t imagine trying to do all of this by hand. I pity the poor teacher that does not know how to use a spreadsheet… the hours of plotting, punching of calculators, stacks of paper….

Q