Excel Design Experience

Fall 2002

Overview

Each team of 3-5 students will design and create an Excel spreadsheet that will calculate and chart something "interesting".

Procedures

Each team should select a design project and discuss how each team member will contribute to the project.

Ideas

Your spreadsheet should have the same flavor as the PSP spreadsheet designed by Dr. Mark Sebern to record data associated with the Personal Software Process. Your project does not need to be as complicated as this, but it should contain some calculations and at least one graph that is dependent upon the input values.

Here are some ideas for potential projects:

• Taxes calculator (1040EZ, etc...)
• Investment calculators
  • Rent vs Own
  • Retirement savings
  • Paying points on a mortgage
  • Given a set of loans, which should be paid off first
  • Finance or pay cash for vehicle
  • Cost of smoking over a lifetime
  • Check out Hugh's Financial Calculators for more ideas
• A set of math problems with a common form
• Unit conversions
• March Madness pool
• Shipping costs with major cariers
• Speech intelligibility calculator
• More ideas
• Even more ideas

Presentation (during week 10 lab)

Projects will be presented during the last lab session. The entire presentation is limited to 15 minutes, and every member of the team must speak. The presentations are formal and team members should dress appropriately. Visual aids (Power Point, videos, models, posters, etc...) are expected. In addition, each team should prepare a handout to be distributed to each class member (instructor included). The handout should be no more than one page (both sides) and should help the audience understand the presentation.

Individual Reports (prior to the start of week 10 lab)

Each team member should submit a 1-2 page summary detailing their perspective on the project. The summary should be typed and include a discussion of:

• their contribution to the project,
• how well their team worked together,
• one "smart" thing that their group did,
• the most interesting feature of the spreadsheet,
• what could be improved next time.

In addition, each team member should complete the team evaluation form.