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Preface

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

Robert de Levie
Affiliation:
Bowdoin College, Maine
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Summary

Chemistry is an experimental science, and primarily lives in the laboratory. No book on spreadsheets will change that. However, many aspects of chemical analysis have significant quantitative, mathematical components, and many of these can be illustrated effectively using spreadsheets. At the same time, the spreadsheet is a very accessible tool for data analysis, an activity common to all of the physical sciences. This book emphasizes the use of spreadsheets in data analysis, while at the same time illustrating some of the underlying principles. The basic strength of spreadsheets was summarized by the name of the very first spreadsheet, VisiCalc, in that it facilitates the visualization of calculations, and thereby can help to make theory and data analysis come to life.

Spreadsheets are well-recognized for their near-immediate response to changes in their input parameters, for their ease in making graphs, for their open format and intuitive layout, and for their forgiving error-handling. For these reasons they are usually considered to be the most easily learned computer tools for numerical data analysis. Moreover, they are widely available, as they are often bundled with standard word processors.

Spreadsheets used to be far inferior to the so-called higher-level computer languages in terms of the mathematical manipulations they would support. In particular, numerical methods requiring iterations used to be awkward on a spreadsheet. Fortunately, this has changed with the introduction, in version 5 of Excel, of a macro language (Visual BASIC for Applications, or VBA) that allows the inclusion of standard computer code.

Type
Chapter
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How to Use Excel® in Analytical Chemistry
And in General Scientific Data Analysis
, pp. xi - xiv
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2001

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  • Preface
  • Robert de Levie, Bowdoin College, Maine
  • Book: How to Use Excel® in Analytical Chemistry
  • Online publication: 05 June 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511808265.001
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Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

  • Preface
  • Robert de Levie, Bowdoin College, Maine
  • Book: How to Use Excel® in Analytical Chemistry
  • Online publication: 05 June 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511808265.001
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Preface
  • Robert de Levie, Bowdoin College, Maine
  • Book: How to Use Excel® in Analytical Chemistry
  • Online publication: 05 June 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511808265.001
Available formats
×