CSIT58 Friday Nov. 20 Participation Credit: Statistics and Database

Part 1 Statistics and Rival Causes

Read "Immigrant Facts Versus Myths"

1. Give an example of a statistic from the article.

2. Give another example of a statistic.

3. Do you think this author made good use of statistics to support his conclusion that illegal immigrants are contributing to society, not hurting it? Why or Why not? Refer to the guidelines from Chapter 11 in Asking the Right Questions in your answer.

4. This article makes use of information provided by the Public Policy Institute of California. Here's how the Institute describes themselves:

Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank. We are dedicated to informing and improving public policy in California through independent, objective, nonpartisan research.
 
PPIC is independent, with no government, university, or charitable affiliations.
 
PPIC is objective. We approach our research without any specific results in mind. And we publish our results even when they may be unpopular or controversial.
 
PPIC is nonpartisan. We do not propose legislation or take positions on legislation, candidates, or ballot measures.
 
We are guided by a set of core values, beliefs, and principles that inform our organization’s choices and staff actions.

Go to the Public Policy Institute of California site at http://www.ppic.org/main/home.asp and use the links to find an article that gives additional statistics about immigrants. Provide the following:

a. The title of the article

b. The URL

c. Give an example of a statistic used in the article.

d. Give another example of a statistic used in the article.

Type your answers in the answer box in Etudes or upload a Word document.

Part 2 Formulas

This exercise covers the material in Excel Project 2 in Dozer's Quintessential Guide to Computer Literacy. We will add formulas to a worksheet together and then you will complete some steps on your own.

1. Open the Furniture worksheet from the shared drive. If you are doing this on your own, you can find in Resources in Etudes.
2. Enter Mon in cell A7. Point to the fill handle and drag down to cell A13 to put the days of the week into the column.
3. Use Autosum to add up the hours in cell B14.
4. Use the fill handle to copy the formula across columns C through E.
5. Use Autosum to total the hours per day in cell F7.
6. Copy the formula down the column.
7. Enter a formula in cell B15 to calculate the gross pay by multiplying the rate in B2 (absolute reference) by the total hours. Press the F4 key to make B2 absolute or type $B$2.
8. Copy the formula across the columns.
9. Enter a formula in cell B16 to calculate the taxes to be withheld. Make sure you use an absolute reference.
10. Copy the formula across the columns.
11. Enter a formula in cell B17 to calculate the net pay.
12. Copy the formula across the columns.
13. Use the AVERAGE function to calculate the average in cell B18.
14. Copy the formula across the columns.
15. Format the numbers in B2 and B15 through F17 as Currency with 2 decimal places.
16. Format the numbers in B18 through F18 as numbers with no decimal places.
17. Format the tax rate in cell B3 as percent with no decimal places.
18. Make cell B19 the active cell. Open the Insert Function dialog box. Change the Category box to say All.
19. Choose the COUNTIF function and click OK.
20. Drag to select B7 through B13 (Kevin's hours). Drag the Function Arguments dialog box out of the way if necessary.
21. In the criteria box, type 0 and click OK.
22. Copy the formula across through column E.
23. View the formulas for the worksheet by pressing Ctrl+~ (tilde). Then turn formula view off again by pressing the same key combination.

Do the following steps on your own:
24. In column G, add a column label and formulas to calculate the gross payroll for each day of the week. Copy the formula down to row 13.
25. Format the worksheet to look more attractive by merging and centering the title and changing alignment, fonts, colors and borders.
26. Save the worksheet as Nov13Furniture. Upload to Tasks, Tests and Surveys.

Additional Notes: Order of Operations

When you type in a formula, Excel doesn't always perform the calculations from left to right. It applies the rules of operator precedence. Here is a list in order, highest to lowest:

Operator Description
Negation (as in –1)
% Percent
^ Exponentiation
* and / Multiplication and division
+ and – Addition and subtraction

Example: =B3 + B4 / B5

If B3 contains 15, B4 contains 9 and B5 contains 3, you might expect the result to be 8.
It is NOT. The division will be done first and then the addition, so the result is 18.

If you put parens around a calculation, you force it to be done first.

=(B3+B4) / B5

The result is 8 because the addition is now done first.

The percent operator is used to make formulas more readable. Instead of typing =G4 * .0825 for sales tax, you can enter =G4 * 8.25%