Monday, February 6, 2017

Using Excel 2016 as a Mathcad


  Although Excel 2016 isn't optimized to function as a mathcad it has a limited capability for doing so. One can use it to take a look at the auxiliary parameters, u and v, used to solve the cubic equation. Here is a check to see that the values satisfy the equation 3uv+B2=0.


An Excel chart can be used to give a visual confirmation of the relative position of these parameters.


The auxiliary equation allowed us to find the cube of u and the formula above relating u and v shows they are simply related.  The Excel chart allows one to plot a number of datasets at the same time. The circles in the plot above were generated by computing a table of x,y values and using the columns of data to specify a "series" for the chart. There's a video that explains how to create charts using spreadsheet data but doing plots like this involves a lot of trial and error.

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