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1B40 COMPUTING: WEEK 2 Department of Physics & Astronomy, University College London

This week you should complete the following tasks:

• Excel task 1 (compound pendulum)
• Excel task 2 (medical module results)
• Excel task 3 (Normal distribution)
  

The first Excel exercise is a simple extension of what has been given in the Introductory session of the first week of the course.  You add error bars to a plot (all experiments have uncertainties), label it properly and use Excel to find the "best line" through the points using the "trendline" facility.  Click on the link Excel-1. (This exercise uses the spreadsheet comp_pendtask.xls.)

Exercise Excel-2 is an extension of the basic material.  In this exercise (medical physics module) you have to plot several histograms of marks, normalised to the same sample size. The medics are also to be graded on a scale with some "compensation" of the grade if the mark is a "fail" mark.  You need to find and look-up the usage of various Excel worksheet functions (e.g. the IF function) using the Excel Help facility.  (This exercise uses the spreadsheet Med_mod_results.xls.)

In exercise Excel-3 we create the first spreadsheet dealing with the material given in the data analysis lectures. It is a simple example of the properties of the normal distribution and the idea of error on the mean.

This week's lecture dealt with the normal distribution and finding the error on the mean.
Next week's lecture will be on laboratory work.