World Population Activity I: Excel

Activity and Starting Point page by R.M. MacKay. Clark College, Physics and Meteorology.

This material is replicated on a number of sites as part of the SERC Pedagogic Service Project

This activity has been reviewed by 2 review processes (view details)

This resource received an Accept or Accept with minor revisions rating from a Panel Peer Review process

These materials were reviewed using face-to-face NSF-style review panel of geoscience and geoscience education experts to review groups of resources addressing a single theme. Panelists wrote reviews that addressed the criteria:
1. scientific accuracy and currency
2. usability and
3. pedagogical effectiveness
Reviewers rated the resources:
1. Accept
2. Accept with minor revisions
3. Accept with major revisions, or
4. Reject.
They also singled out those resources they considered particularly exemplary, which are given a gold star rating.

Following the panel meetings, the conveners wrote summaries of the panel discussion for each resource; these were transmitted to the creator, along with anonymous versions of the reviews. Relatively few resources were accepted as is. In most cases, the majority of the resources were either designated as 1) Reject or 2) Accept with major revisions. Resources were most often rejected for their lack of completeness to be used in a classroom or they contained scientific inaccuracies.

Initial Publication Date: July 19, 2005

Summary

In this introductory activity students use Excel to explore population dynamics using the Logistic equation for (S-shaped) population growth. This activity is primarily intended as an introductory tutorial on using Excel. As a follow-up, Activity II continues this tutorial and compares populations predicted by the Logistic equations with those from UNEP.

Human Population, Statistics | College Introductory

Expand for more detail and links to related resources

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Learning Goals

In this first Activity students are carefully guided through using Excel to:

input numbers and labels
format fonts, numbers, alignment, and cell widths
use simple equations and how to copy these to other cells to generate a table from a mathematical formula (analytical model)
learn about fixed and variable cell references in Excel equations
make and format graphs with multiple curves
learn about population dynamics and the logistic growth equation.

Context for Use

This is a generic introductory tutorial on using Excel with a focus on world population. This topic was chosen as it is appropriate for many introductory geoscience courses. This is a good activity to start with if you intend to use Excel in your introductory course as either a lab tool or for modeling activities.

Teaching Materials

Here we give:

Activity Sheet (Excel 2003 version) (Acrobat (PDF) 1.2MB Aug10 03); Activity Sheet (Excel 2007 version) (Acrobat (PDF) 469kB Dec9 10)
Answers Document (Excel 90kB Apr3 04) with several sheets representing different levels of completion. These Excel documents can be used for either:

Introducing concepts and ideas in an interactive lecture
making transparencies or power point slides
checking student results

Sample images of what's in the Excel Answer Document and what students are expected to accomplish.

Figure 1. Predicted (modeled) populations for imaginary planet Xox for different initial growth rate values r.

Figure 2. Predicted (modeled) population growth for imaginary planet Xox for different initial growth rate values r.

Teaching Notes and Tips

This activity will take students about 2 hrs to complete. Students should be able to work through this activity at home or in a computer lab will no supervision. Students more familiar with Excel can work through this activity more quickly.

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Assessment

Grading the completed activity sheet provided can be used as an assessment of student understanding. The future success of students on other Excel related activities is also another useful assessment tool.

An Excel Answers Document is provided above with several sheets representing different levels of completion for this activity. This can help instructors: