Datasheet

22
Part I: Statistics and Excel: A Marriage Made in Heaven
Dragging isn’t the only way to do it. Another way is to select the array of cells
you want to autofill (including the one that contains the formula), and click
the down arrow next to
Home | Fill
This opens the Fill pop-up menu (see Figure 1-5). Select Down and you
accomplish the same thing as dragging and dropping.
Figure 1-5:
The Fill
pop-up
menu.
Still another way is to select Series from the Fill pop-up menu. Doing this
opens the Series dialog box (see Figure 1-6). In this dialog box, click the
AutoFill radio button, click OK, and you’re all set. This does take one more
step, but the Series dialog box is a bit more compatible with earlier versions
of Excel.
Figure 1-6:
The Series
dialog box.
I bring this up because statistical analysis often involves repeating a formula
from cell to cell. The formulas are usually more complex than the ones in this
section, and you might have to repeat them many times, so it pays to know
how to autofill.
Referencing cells
The second important fundamental is the way Excel references worksheet
cells. Consider again the worksheet in Figure 1-4. Each autofilled formula is
slightly different from the original. This, remember, is the formula in cell H2:
05 454060-ch01.indd 2205 454060-ch01.indd 22 4/21/09 7:17:59 PM4/21/09 7:17:59 PM