foundations of engineering design I Class 14– Oct 9 Excel as a Modeling Tool + Professional

today’s plan math modeling with Excel (PA 14) creating graphs in Excel assignments & announcements

love it? hate it? let’s talk about it.

course competency “utilize effective and professional communication in the course of a project” you will submit an upcoming competency assignment as an attachment

let’s characterize attributes of professional

professional proper salutation closing (who is it from?) appropriate/useful subject line proper grammar/spelling (not texting grammar) professional tone

more etiquette avoid using all caps consider your signature cc when necessary (not more) find other ways to send large files

modeling with Excel get out your laptops and open up Excel

“All models are wrong. Some are useful” - George Box

remember your own dental hygiene process? we now want to build a math model to estimate the annual cost to implement it. take a few minutes to write out (by hand) the variables and/or equations you will need for this model. work in teams of 2 or 3.

reporting out what were your variables? what was your final equation? what assumptions did your model make?

C i =purchase price; u i =single usage amount; n i = number of uses per day, s i = purchase size

let’s model it in Excel individually, you will build the model to predict the annual cost of your dental hygiene process using Excel

some style tips store values separately from equation name cells that store key equation variables use colors to identify model inputs/fixed values

figures – must haves title legend (when necessary) caption (when included in communication)

ok, here we go… using the guidelines on the provided handout, build, execute, and then plot results of your team’s models. I’ll be around to help where you need me.

assignments Upcoming Practice Assignments PA 14: big mac modeling (10/18) PA 15: hydration assignment (10/11) PA 16: learn a new excel function (10/11) posted on blackboard under assignments  practice assignments Competency Assignments posted on blackboard under assignments  competency assignments reminder: no class on Tuesday, 10/16! enjoy fall break!