Is it allowed to use excel for questions (such as Graduation / tests) which require repetitive calculation across a table, and then paste into a word table? Also any tips to type matrices without it looking terrible? Also, is it okay to play fast-and-loose with the notation so long as its clear? For example I'd type this: Sum_{all ages} (d_x - mu_x*E^c_x)^2 / mu_x*E^c_x ..which borrows a wee bit from Latex and I'm saying "sum" because it would be too time consuming to dig out a capital sigma. I tend to type a instead of alpha too and say somewhere a := alpha. Should I be putting in more effort than this?
Hi Patrick Yes I understand it is perfectly fine to use Excel for these calculations, just make sure that you still show your workings in Word. For example, for calculating standardised deviations in Excel, I believe it would be fine to write down the formula for zx as your workings, rather than typing out every single calculation. For matrices, you could always insert a table to make the entries line up nicely. The notation that you've written looks perfectly fine and clear to me, although you may wish to include some brackets on the denominator. There is some example notation given in the IFoA's handbook here. It also states that any sensible notation should get marks. Hope this helps! Andy
