Microsoft Excel™ as a Tool for Teaching Basic Statistics

Many instructors use specialized statistics packages, such as SPSS or SAS/STAT in teaching quantitative and research methods courses. As an alternative to the specialized packages, Microsoft Excel™ offers charting capabilities and the Analysis ToolPak, which provides a set of data analysis tools beyond those normally found in spreadsheets. With Analysis ToolPak, Excel resembles what one would expect from a specialized low-level statistics program. We have successfully integrated Excel into our introductory statistics courses and developed a tutorial manual to guide students through various statistical procedures in Excel. We present student ratings of an intermediate form of the manual and its exercises and discuss the advantages and disadvantages of using Excel rather than a specialized statistical package for teaching basic statistics.