I've been using "Data Analysis and Decision Making with Microsoft 
Excel" by Albright, Winston and Zappe (Duxbury Press 1999) in 2 MBA 
classes. One class is a part-time MBA program for employed people. 
The other is part of a lock-step program for people without any 
business background. About half of this latter group have come 
directly from some non-business undergraduate program. I'm halfway 
through the course.

Generally, I really like the book. Students who don't have a good 
computer background seem to be having a much harder time. Early in 
the semester I did a couple of tutorials on Excel. The examples in 
the book go step-by-step, I thought the students should be able to do 
things just from the examples. That's not always the case, and it 
seems to vary by chapter.

The probability chapter (4) is weighted a little too heavily on joint 
pdf's and doesn't spend any time on some basics like P(A union B), 
although it's used later & it's needed in the exercises.  I like the 
simulations and I think the students liked doing those exercises also.

I skipped most of Chapter 6. There seemed to be too much going on. 
Also, there are several different Excel add-ins associated with just 
that chapter. I didn't want the students to go through those just for 
one chapter.

Right now we're on Chapter 8. Confidence Intervals. I really like 
Statpro's CI presentation. The menus are easy to use. You can change 
the confidence level & the CI limits change.

There are some things about StatPro that make it cumbersome to use. 
For histograms, you have to specify the minimum value, the number of 
intervals, and then the interval width. Pedagogically, it might have 
some value because you really have to make some preliminary 
calculations before these make sense.  I wish there were dotplots.

I'll probably use the book again. If I do, I'm going to spend the 
first 2 lectures making sure people know how to use Excel & helping 
them go through the Examples in the chapters.


>Any opinions on "Data Analysis and Decision Making with Microsoft Excel"
>by Albright, Winston and Zappe (Duxbury Press 1999)?
>
>I picked it up and it fell open at Deming's 14 points of management - so
>I thought these are good guys whatever else they write.  The Deming
>points arise in a chapter on SPC, which might answer a need raised by
>Neville last month. The book comes with an add-in called Statpro, though
>I cannot find this as a separate item on the Web.
>
>R. Allan Reese                       Email: [log in to unmask]
>Associate Manager                    Direct voice:   +44 1482 466845
>Graduate Research Institute          Voice messages: +44 1482 466844
>Hull University, Hull HU6 7RX, UK.   Fax:            +44 1482 466846
>====================================================================
>If Stephenson, Marconi and Edison had lived in the opposite order, so
>the mobile phone got invented before the railway, would people still
>find the need to travel, and tell people where they are?

***************************************
Catherine Shenoy
University of Kansas School of Business
Summerfield Hall
Lawrence, KS 66045

e-mail:[log in to unmask]
Tel: (785) 864-7519 Fax: (785) 864-5328
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