Yes, as Aaron Titus points out, the way Excel does some things is not the
easiest or the best for physics.
We had introduced the WPTools here a number of years ago, but I did not use
them, mainly so that my students would learn how to do their graphing and
analysis on any system with Excel running and not only on our systems with
WPTools. So I hope I did not come on too strong about using the built-in
Excel features.
One of my biggest frustrations is how Excel chooses by default to assign
columns to the "x" and "y" variables, without asking. For example, we
usually plot distance in a first column and then the time in the second
column when collecting time data as a ball rolls down an incline plane. But
when these get highlighted and a graph formed, one must change the series
variables by hand (by editing the series locations in a dialogue box).
Excel seems to always "barf" if we try to change these column selections by
clicking and highlighting. A solution is to reverse our columns with data,
but conceptually this seems less than satisfactory. Has anyone found a
better solution for this?
Richard Bowman, prof. of physics & dir. of academic computing
Bridgewater College, Bridgewater, VA 22812 USA