ICT Skills for Teachers
Analyse data (Intermediate level)
As an educator your class may collect data from your community while on a field trip. You will need to collate and summarise the data they received from the respondents (by sorting information and doing simple counts). You will do this by using Microsoft Excel, a spreadsheet application.
By the end of this task you could achieve the following outcomes:
- Enter information in a spreadsheet
- Make columns fit the information in them
- Automatically insert numbers
- Insert numbers and text efficiently
- Sort information
- Use the help function
- Summarise numeric data by calculating an average
- Summarise text data by counting items
Create your own spreadsheet for analysis - one which you will find useful. Alternatively, follow this example. To do so you would typically work through the following steps:
| 1. | Start Microsoft Excel. See how » |
| 2. | Type column headings: In Cell A1, type the word "Respondents". Type in other headings (for example, Gender, Age, Occupation, Qualification). You can use any other headings which might be relevant to your situation. |
| 3. | Save your workbook: Remember to save your work at regular intervals. See how » |
| 4. | Resize your columns: You can make your column wide enough to fit the current information. You can re-do this whenever a column is too narrow or wide. See how » |
| 5. | Use Autofill to enter Numbers automatically: Use Autofill to automatically insert numbers for all of your respondents. See how » |
| 6. | Enter columns of numbers: Type in the data (for example, respondents' ages). See how » |
| 7. | Enter columns of text: Type in text information (for example, "Male" or "Female") as per the information collected. See how » |
| 8. | Sort your information in a simple way: You might want to sort your data, eg. have all the females first, then the males. See how » |
| 9. | Calculate an average: At the bottom of a column of numeric information (for example, "Age"), you can use the AVERAGE function to calculate the average. See how » |
| 10. | Count the number of items in a column: If you wanted to count the number of items in a column containing text (for example, Gender), you would need to use the COUNTIF function. See how » |
| 11. | Save your file. See how » |
| 12. | Print your worksheet: You may like to print the data. |
Related scenarios
» Create a graph» Import a graph into a word processor
» Pivot tables for more complex analysis
