Microcomputer Proficiency Exam

Practice Exam #2

The Excel file Excel2.xls contains high school graduation and population data for the 50
U.S. states for the year 2004. One piece of information contained in this worksheet is the
number of public high school graduates (in thousands). The remaining information are
variables for population be race/ethnic background (in thousands) and region. The
Director of the Tennessee Department of Education is interested in knowing how
Tennessee’s high school graduation rate compares to the rest of the states in the nation
and how the four regions stack up against one another. Complete the following tasks to
produce a memo to the Director on this issue.

a. Compute the total population for each state as follows:

Total population = white + African American + Native American + Asian
+ Hawaiian/Pacific Islander + Two or more races

b. Compute the percent of public high school graduates for each state as follows:
Percent public high school graduates = (No. of public high school
graduates / total population) * 100
c. Sort the states by the new variable percent of public high school graduates and
find where Tennessee ranks out of the 50 states (with rank 1 meaning the highest
percent and rank 50 meaning the lowest percent).
d. Sort the states by region of the U.S.
e. Compute the average percent of public high school graduates for each of the four
regions of the U.S.
f. Construct a bar chart that presents the average percent of high school graduates
for each of the four regions. (Your chart should have 4 bars.)
g. Construct a memo in Microsoft Word and report the following information:
• the percent of public high school graduates for Tennessee
• the state with the highest percent of public high school graduates (and its
value on this variable)
• the state with the lowest percent of public high school graduates (and its
value on this variable)
• import the bar chart that you created
h. Save both your final Excel file and Word file on the disk that you have been
provided.