[Blindmath] implied Question about Excel

[Jonathan Godfrey]

Hi Michael et al,

I think anyone who chooses to use Excel must do so with a good measure of
care.

First, as has been mentioned on this list about once a year since I joined,
Excel in basic form just does not do everything needed.

You can use Excel as a calculator and scratch pad to do your own work. That
could include creating the necessary worksheets to do the SPC (Statistical
Process Control) tasks.
You can create graphs using Excel - well some graphs.
You can get jaws to give you some information about some of these graphs
thanks to some interesting scripting work done by FS over the last ten
years.
You can download templates for some calculations from internet sources.
Watch where you tread though. Templates are based on someone else's ability
and may suit their needs not yours.

You cannot:
- bank on using add-on packages written for various textbooks, especially if
you are not a windows user. Their accessibility is dubious.
- create  all necessary exploratory graph types efficiently and effectively.
- do all analyses expected of an introductory course in statistics using
Excel functions as efficiently as students using proper statistical
software.

Excel is not statistical software but it can be used effectively if you are
prepared to learn how to drive Excel properly. I do use it for a number of
tasks and is my second most frequently used software (after R) for doing
anything numeric. That's the nature of my work though. To be honest, I
generally use Excel for manipulating large data sets as it has find/replace
functionality that is efficient compared to using R.

My feeling about the use of Excel is basically that anyone that is willing
to recommend its use in place of statistical software better be ready to
support the student to do all tasks expected of the sighted student using
the preferred software. I can guarantee this for my students that have the
choice of Minitab or R and that is why I can do the same for blind R users
who ask for my help. I cannot and would not offer the same guarantee to a
blind Excel user.

Jonathan

-----Original Message-----
From: blindmath-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:blindmath-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
Behalf Of Michael Whapples
Sent: Tuesday, 25 October 2011 9:04 a.m.
To: Blind Math list for those interested in mathematics
Subject: Re: [Blindmath] Question about Minitab

Hello,
I recently asked a similar question as I will have to use minitab for a
course I am taking. You could look back through the archives for what was
said on that. As my memory goes previous versions have been usable but the
current one is not great.

After speaking with the course organisers and disability support people for
my course I was advised to forget about minitab and just use excel. The
course staff admitted in my case for this course the choice to use minitab
is not really needed and that if they were starting again they probably
wouldn't choose minitab for the course. Most of what I will be doing is
basic statistics, they said the only part where I might have issues with
excel is for SPC.

I don't know if your course would allow such a view to be taken. I hope what
I have described above being decided for me and my course, will help you
form a sort of view whether it is appropriate for you.

Michael whapples
On 24 Oct 2011, at 20:47, Icewolf wrote:

> Hello all,
> I am taking a statistics class at my college.  It is statistics for
business decision making.  they use my statistics Lab and a program called
Minitab.  Is minitab at all accessible with JAWS or NVDA?  To make matters
worse I have to access the program through a cytrix environment.
> Thanks for any help,
> Greg Wocher
> 
> --
> Yesterday is forever gone, tomorrow may never come, today is the day of
all days.
> 
> 
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