UMass Online
92.419 Intro to Mathematica
Kenneth M. Levasseur
Department of Mathematical Sciences
University of Massachusetts Lowell
Lowell, MA 01854

Avoiding Excel

Subject

Programming

Topic

If you're like me and open Excel and other Microsoft applications only as a last resort, this idea might appeal to you. You can import Excel spread sheets in Mathematica. It's this easy:

t=Import["sheetname.xls","XLS"]

will assign to t an array of values from the spreadsheet called sheetname.xls. There are a few other details, but nothing complicated. I've used this in several instances and used Mathematica to do calculations based on the contents of a spreadsheet. For example, if you have 25 quiz grades and want do drop the lowest 20% of the grades with negative grades being "excused" absences, it is very easy to do in Mathematica.

Reference(s)

Ken Levasseur, Importing Excel Files, listed in the Programming examples on the UML Mathematica page.

Project Idea(s)

I create web pages based on the contents of spreadsheets - see reference 1 for a simple example, but I'm sure there are plenty of other ideas that you can come up with. It depends on what kind of Excel spreadsheets you tend to use.

Prerequisite Mathematics

Minimal

Required Programming Level

Moderate, at least

Key Words

Excel, Microsoft, Office, Word, avoidance

Reviewer

K. M. Levasseur (mailto:kenneth_levasseur@uml.edu)