 Statistics and Excel. Typing mathematical equations in Microsoft Excel. Get ready taking a deep breath holding it in for 10 seconds and looking forward to a smooth soothing Excel. Here we are in Excel. If you don't have access to this workbook that's okay because we'll basically build this from a blank worksheet but if you do have access just two tabs down below this time example and blank example in essence answer key blank tab blank worksheet where we will work through the practice problem together. Let's take a look at the example tab to get an idea of where we will be going. Now note when we think about actual mathematical formulas and equations things that look like this on the left hand side it can be a little bit confusing when we then try to work through practice problems in Excel because we usually think about in Excel functions which start with say an equal sign like the sum function and then we're going to put some data inputs in order for it to give us the result of the functions. However oftentimes it's useful for us to actually type down the equations and so so we're going to practice doing that here we'll actually type the equation in place and it also can be a little bit confusing when using Excel to use some of the symbols which often are like Greek symbols for example and so the common symbols we'll be using in statistics might be like an x bar a sigma a mu sigma squared for example and there's a couple different ways that we can type those. Now note when you're working in Excel then if you can convert something to a function like if you're going to take the mean of something you might use an average function it's quite useful but sometimes it's useful to think about things algebraically too so the good old paper and pencil sometimes is a good way to go but the other thing you can also do is take a complex equation and basically break it down in kind of a worksheet in a table type of format which is often something that's useful to do in Excel so we'll get kind of an idea of what I'm talking about later but for now what we want to do is just say well how can I type something like this into Excel and how can I basically get some of the letters that I would like to use in our mathematical equations in Excel so I can represent them in our cells. Let's go to the blank tab to check that out so if I just want to add if I want to type an equation I could go to the insert tab up top and you've got the symbols on the right in the symbols group so if I just want to add a symbol I can go here if there's a particular mass symbol that's like a Greek symbol or Greek letter or something and or I can go to the equation so here let's add the equation now if I hit the drop-down you've got some standard equations so the ones we're working with we might be able to find you know in the standard equations but let's practice typing it in here that gives us our formula bar now if we go into our formula bar then we could then add all of the items within a formula so we can do that by going to the equation up top so remember I've added a formula here I'm going to scroll in a little bit and if I'm off of it I don't see the tabs up top but if I go on to it then I've got the shape format and the equations now I could add each kind of component of the equation and it gives you these little little helper boxes and tools which is quite useful and and you can it's tedious to do but you can build a complex formula using all of these tools however there's an easier way to do it which I think would would be useful for most people we can go to the tools over here and say I would like to write it with an ink equation and if you have a if you have and it looks like this and then it'll try to simulate what you are writing using these tools in essence which which is great however you know I'm gonna have to do that of course with just an ink pat with just my mouse so if you had an actual pen to write it would be easier but you can do it with your mouse I'll do it with my mouse here so we're gonna write this first equation which is this is the mean this is one way we can represent it I'm gonna put an x here and so you can see what it's trying to do it's like a two no I put the other bar and it's like oh it's an x okay and then I put the bar over the top of it and so it reads that correctly an equal sign I'm just gonna say equals and then I'm gonna say x and I want to say this is gonna be subset one so notice it thinks it's a two then it's an x like yeah that's it and then I'm gonna put a little one next to it so it picks that up nicely and then a plus button and to say plus and then I'll say x and I'm just doing this with a mouse so you can although it's hard to type with a mouse you can do it and if you get something wrong you can erase it down here so I can erase that too if I wanted to boom it's gone you can also circle something and it gives you other options so if I'm like that is not an x and they give you other options that well maybe I'll give it a different guess right it kind of does that so but I think the easiest thing is usually to just delete the wrong thing and retype it so there's a two so that looks good and then I'm gonna say plus and then x see that's an ugly x see if it picks it up it's still it still sees it it still gets it three I did that on purpose just to show how it can pick it up even when you do it ugly x and then plus and then I'm gonna put dot dot dot dot dot