McGraw-Hill, 1997, and even some remnants of my Spreadsheet Workbook for Quantitative Chemical Analysis, McGraw-Hill, 1992.
This is partially because I have retained some of the didactic innovations introduced in these earlier texts, such as an emphasis on the progress of a titration rather than on the traditional titration curve, the use of buffer strength rather than buffer value, and the use of the abbreviations h and k in the description of electrochemical equilibria.
However, the present text exploits the power of Excel to go far beyond what was possible in those earlier books.
For a few problems that would require the reader to write some rather complex macros, these have been provided.
They are fully documented and explained in chapter 10, and can be downloaded from http://uk.cambridge.org/chemistry/resources/delevie Note that their code is readily accessible, and that the reader is not only encouraged to modify them, but is given the tools to do so.
Again, the idea is to empower the reader to incorporate existing higher-language code into macros, in order to increase the reach and usefulness of Excel.
The first chapter introduces the reader to the software; it can be speed-read or skipped by those already familiar with Windows- or Mac-based spreadsheets. The last chapter dis- cusses macros, which can convert a spreadsheet into a powerful computing tool.
Sandwiched between these are the four main parts of this book: statistics and related methods, chemical equilibrium, instrumental methods, and mathematical analysis.
These parts can be used independently, although some aspects introduced in chapters 2 and 3 are used in subsequent chapters, and the spreadsheet instructions tend to become somewhat less detailed as the text progresses.
The treatment of statistics is focused on explicit applications of both linear and nonlinear least-squares methods, rather than on the alphabet soup (F, Q, R, T, etc.) of available tests. However, within that rather narrow framework, many practical aspects of error analysis and curve fitting are considered.
They are chosen to illustrate the now almost two centuries old dictum of de Laplace that the theory of probability is merely common sense confirmed by calculation.
Since the spreadsheet is eminently capable of doing tedious numerical work, exact mathematical expressions are used as much as possible in the examples involving chemical equilibria.
Similarly, the treatment of titrations emphasizes the use of exact mathematical relations, which can then be fitted to experimental data.
In some of the exercises, the student first computes, say, a make-believe titration curve, complete with simulated noise, and is then asked to extract from that curve the relevant parameters.
