FREE “GRAPHING CALCULATOR”
A friend at work asked about buying a graphing calculator for his daughter. The calculators run around $80 – $100, but I thought she could probably just use Excel, as it’s only for homework. I wrote this simple spreadsheet and thought that someone here might be able to use it, too.
Caveats:
1) You’ll need either Excel ($$$) or Open Office (free). Google Docs doesn’t create the graph.
2) You’ll have to create whatever function you need in cell D2 and copy it down to D1002.
3) Be careful when using trig functions. The default for Excel is radians. If you don’t specify degrees, you might get some strange-looking graphs. The way to do this is not very intuitive. In fact, it’s always looked backwards to me. For example, to graph sin(x) from -180 to 180 degrees, enter the two values for the starting and ending x and enter the formula =SIN(RADIANS(C2)) in D2 and then copy down.
Have fun, and if you get stuck drop me a line.