Six Sigma
Enviado por private_er • 29 de Abril de 2013 • 1.883 Palabras (8 Páginas) • 199 Visitas
An Overview of Minitab
and Microsoft Excel
Learning Objectives:
Understanding the primary tools used in Minitab and Excel
The complexity involved in manipulating some statistics formulae and
the desire to get the results quickly have resulted in the creation of a
plethora of statistical software. Most of them are very effective tools at
solving problems quickly and are very easy to use.
Minitab has been around for many years and has proven to be very
sophisticated and easy to use. It has also been adopted by most Six
Sigma practitioners as a preferred tool. The statistics portion of Microsoft
Excel’s functionalities does not match Minitab’s capabilities but
because it is easy to access and easy to use, Excel is widely used by professionals.
2.1 Starting with Minitab
From a Microsoft desktop, Minitab is opened like any other program,
either by double-clicking on its icon or from the Windows Start Menu.
Once the program is open, we obtain a window that resembles the one
shown in Figure 2.1. The top part of the window resembles most Microsoft
programs. It has a title bar, a menu bar, and a tool bar.
The session window displays the output of the statistical analysis
while the worksheets store the data to be analyzed. The worksheets
resemble Excel’s spreadsheets but their functionalities are totally
different. Some operations can be directly performed on the Excel
23
Copyright © 2007 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Click here for terms of use.
24 Chapter Two
Title Bar
Menu Bar
Tool Bar
The Session window is used
to output the results
Minitab worksheet is different
from Excel spread sheet
even though they look alike.
They do not perform the
same functions and have
very few similarities and
capabilities
Figure 2.1
spreadsheet but would require extra steps when using Minitab. Minitab
does not offer the same flexibility as Excel outside of statistical analysis.
Column header without any text
Column names
Column header for column
containing a text
Column header for a column
containing dates
The worksheets come with default column headers. The default headers
start with the letter “C” and a number. If the columns are filled with
numeric data only, their headers remain unchanged; if the columns
An Overview of Minitab and Microsoft Excel 25
contain text data, “-T” will be added to the default header; if the data
contained in the columns are dates or times, “-D” will be added to the
default header.
Underneath the column headers we have the column names, which
are blank when the Minitab window is first opened. The column names
are entered or pasted with the data. These names are important because
they will follow the data throughout the analysis and will be part of the
output.
2.1.1 Minitab’s menus
Minitab uses some namings on the menu bar that are common to most
Microsoft products. The content and the layout of the File menu are
close to Excel’s File menu with a few exceptions. The shortcuts are the
same in both Excel and Minitab: Ctrl+n is for a new file and Ctrl+p is
for the print function.
File menu. The “New. . . ” option of the File menu will prompt the user
to choose between a new project and a new worksheet. Choosing a
new project will generate a new session window and a new worksheet,
whereas choosing a new worksheet will maintain the current session
window but create a new worksheet.
The “Open Project . . . ” option will list all the previously saved Minitab
projects so that the user can make a selection from prior work. The
“Project Description . . . ” option enables the user to save a project under
a new name along with comments and the date and time.
Will show existing previously
saved Minitab projects in
Microsoft open dialog box
The last projects worked on {
{
Store the project name,
location, date and
comments
Adds a new worksheet to the
project, saves existing one
}
...