APPENDIX B: COMPUTER SOFTWARE
A large number of computer software packages and spreadsheets are now
available that can be used to generate probabilities such as those provided in
Tables A.1–A. 6as well as to perform other statistical calculations. For exam-
ple, some statistical functions available in Microsoft^1 ExcelTM2000 are listed
below, which can be used to carry out many probability calculations and to do
many exercises in the text.
AVEDEV: gives the average of the absolute deviations of data points from
their mean
AVERAGE: gives the average of its arguments
AVERAGEA: gives the average of its arguments, including numbers, text, and
logical values
BETADIST: gives the beta probability distribution function
BETAINV: gives the inverse of the beta probability distribution function
BINOMDIST: gives the individual term binomial probability
CHIDIST: gives the one-tailed probability of the Chi-squared distribution
CHIINV: gives the inverse of the one-tailed probability of the Chi-squared
distribution
CHITEST: gives the test for independence
CONFIDENCE: gives the confidence interval for a population mean
CORREL: gives the correlation coefficient between two data sets
COUNT: counts how many numbers are in the list of arguments
COUNTA: counts how many values are in the list of arguments
COVAR: gives covariance, the average of the products of paired deviations
CRITBINOM: gives the smallest value for which the binomial distribution
function is less than or equal to the criterion value
DEVSQ: gives the sum of squares of deviations
EXPONDIST: gives the exponential distribution
FORECAST: gives a value along a linear trend
FREQUENCY: gives a frequency distribution as a vertical array
FundamentalsofProbabilityandStatisticsforEngineersT.T. SoongÓ2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd
ISBNs: 0-470-86813-9 (HB) 0-470-86814-7 (PB)