This week was all about Excel - or Numbers, if you're on a macbook like me. I saw on another student's blog that they learned how to use Excel in 8th grade. This impressed me!! I didn't know how to use the program until I was much older. However, either way, I love the program and use it all the time.
One thing that I use Numbers for very frequently is to make a spreadsheet for my grades. I have the sheet set up so that every semester I put in the classes I'm taking, the credit hours, and grade. I entered the formulas so it not only calculates my GPA for that semester, but my cumulative GPA as well. This has become a really useful tool that I use all the time - it's a really easy way to check what grades I need to get to keep my GPA high enough to keep my scholarship. All I have to do is put in different potential grades and I instantly see what GPA those grades will get me! It took some time to get the formulas right (you have to put in all the numerical values for A, A-, B+, etc.) and definitely a lot of tweaking, but now that I have it right I am so glad I took the time. I used to figure out my GPA by hand - what a pain. This is so much easier.
This semester I'm also a TA for EDUC205 (Human Development), and I've found that Numbers is useful for this particular aspect of my school life as well. The professor that I am the TA for likes to know the ranges and averages of quiz, test, and other assignment grades. All I have to is enter the grades in Numbers and the program will sort them in order and calculate the averages for me. Such a time saver!!
Cheers,
Brooke
Oh wow I never even thought about using Excel to calculate my GPA. Which is weird because I've been using it for so long, the thought never occured to me. I'm definitely to going to start figuring that out, thanks for the idea Brooke!
ReplyDeleteI'm in EDUC205 where you are a TA and I always appreciate when the professor tells us what the lowest grade was, what the highest grade was, and what the average grade was, so I can compare what I received to how the other students in the class got. I didn't know she used Excel to figure that out! I'm still surprised that I never thought of that!!