Excel Lessons

  1. To avoid charting missing values as zero, cause them to be calculated as =NA().
  2. The function SUMPRODUCT is an element of matrix multiplication (essentially, it's multiplying a 1xn matrix times an nx1 matrix.
  3. The function mmult() is used to multiply matrices. It is an array function. This means (1) that it is "inserted" into multiple cells at the start (the range representing the matrix which will store the product we are computing), and (2) that we use CONTROL-SHIFT-ENTER to finish the formula. Remember that when multiplying an $r_1 \times c_1$ matrix and an $r_2 \times c_2$ matrix, $c_1$ must be equal to $r_2$ and the product matrix will be $r_1 \times c_2$.
  4. We can control which rows of a table are calculated by including a formula like this
    • =if(rownumber > currentrowcounter, compute results, use NA()

Lab Tutorial

Work through the worksheets in the attached Excel file

Lab Deliverable

Do two more Markov problems using Excel and present professional quality PDFs of word-processed reports on each.

File nameFile typeSize
markov-lab-2012.xlsxNo description137.7 kBInfo
markov-lab-2013.xlsxNo description139.99 kBInfo