This page is intended to help students make use of Excel spreadsheets to help understand finance, work through problems and complete spreadsheet-related projects. An introduction to spreadsheet use in finance can be linked to below . Several spreadsheet files are provided here for use in Dr. Teall's courses. The data retreival and manipulation files are provided to simplify the process of downloading data from the web and then performing computations. Other files provided here may be useful for students for a variety of purposes. Finally, several links are provided below to other interesting spreadsheets, applications and other aids. Each of Dr. Teall's course web pages will link to spreadsheet files (typically through "Other" in the table of links on the home page for the course) that may be useful for problem solving for that specific course.
   

Instructions and Assistance Using Spreadsheets
Instructions are available here for students who require a review of spreadsheet usage. Have a look at a very brief introduction to using a spreadsheet for multiplying and inverting matrices. Additional spreadsheet instruction, hints and applications to finance are provided in the appendices to Chapters Three and Four of the Elementary Mathematics Review.

Students requiring some review for the use of Excel macros are directed to the the Introduction to Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) page . VBA is most useful for performing more complex operations and for making files more user friendly. This page provides some introductory details and some examples. The spreadsheet file vba.xls is intended to provide examples of macro use and may also be downloaded. It is suggested that this file be used with the the Introduction to Visual Basic for Applications page .

Professor Simon Benninga, formerly at the Wharton School, has written a very useful textbook and is preparing a draft for another that may be useful to students preparing finance-oriented spreadsheets. The textbook,  Financial Modeling published by the MIT Press in 1997 presents some applications-oriented finance material with a heavy emphasis on spreadsheet analysis. The book also includes an introduction to VBA. The draft of the manuscript for his second text is available from Professor Benninga's web site .  Users may obtain an ID and Password by contacting Professor Benninga directly.