Performance Charts - The aim of this task is to produce a simple chart comparing the points gained by each house from a sample event from last year's Sports Day, and comparing the points gained by boys and girls from these houses.

CHRISTOPHER KURWIE - - Task 3
11PS

Design Task 3

Performance Charts

The aim of this task is to produce a simple chart comparing the points gained by each house from a sample event from last year’s Sports Day, and comparing the points gained by boys and girls from these houses. In this case, the results that I shall use are from the 100m. As it is a graph that must be created, and number manipulations must be carried out, I believe that a spreadsheet would be the most effective solution. I believe Microsoft Excel to be the most effective solution to this problem. Not only am I comfortable with its features, but also it can fully complete the task, without the need for other software to be used. (This is aside from Microsoft Word needed for the design, testing and evaluation.) The features that I shall use are:

The data can be placed into an easy to read and analyse format, so that it can be easily interpreted. This will allow me to compare and select the data that must be placed into the chart.
There are many graphs that are available to me. Some of these include: column, bar, pie, line and XY scatter. A preview of these can be seen before continuing, to check if they look correct, and satisfy the analysis criteria.
Helpful wizards are provided that guide an inexperienced user through the steps to creating an appropriate chart.
Labels, legends, titles, axes names, gridlines, data labels and data tables can all be added to create the desired effect on the graph.
Colours, such as flood fills can be added on the chart to make it look more appealing, as it is to go on display, and so must look good.
Formulae can be added onto the sheets, so when the data provided needs to be manipulated, this can be done by a time saving method.
When creating a graph, Excel provides many options, allowing for either complex or simplistic graphs.

INSTRUCTIONS

To complete the task, fulfilling the analysis criteria, there are several steps that must be taken to reach the final product. These are:

After opening Microsoft Excel, the data provided on file must be pasted into the spreadsheet. Once this is done, it must be manipulated so that only the essential data is left, and it is in manageable order.
To do this, the columns titled ‘year’ and ‘race’ can be deleted, as they are the same for all of the rows of figures, and therefore serve no purpose. This leaves only the gender, and the actual points obtained by each house. In addition to this, totals must be found for each house and for boys and girls from each house. These are the figures that must be placed onto the chart. These figures shall be found out using formulae
Adding formulae is very simple, but there are a few simple rules that must always be followed for a formula to work. They can either be used to calculate the contents of individual cells or to compute the sum of a complete range of cells. Therefore, they must, for addition, take one of two forms:

=SUM(x+y+z)

(Where x, y and z are all cells)

=SUM(x:y)

(Where x:y is a range of cells)

NOTE: In this case, no multiplication needs to done, so this does not need to be explained.

This is how I plan to layout the spreadsheet, and how I plan to add formulae to create the appropriate figures for the chart. This is only a plan of the layout, and the specific cells used may have to be changed. This will therefore result in the formulae changing accordingly.