Analysis Of Variance With Summary Statistics In Microsoft Excel

Abstract

Students regularly are asked to solve Single Factor Analysis of Variance problems given only the sample summary statistics (number of observations per category, category means, and corresponding category standard deviations).   Most undergraduate students today use Excel for data analysis of this type.  However, Excel, like all other statistical software packages, requires an input data set in order to invoke its Anova: Single Factor procedure.  The purpose of this paper is therefore to provide the student with an Excel macro that, given just the sample summary statistics as input, generates an equivalent underlying data set.  This data set can then be used as the required input data set in Excel for Single Factor Analysis of Variance.