"James7100" wrote...
I'm starting on a course in statistics and we have to do a lot of index
numbers. Now Excel is good at this as long as the indexes are simple.

But I can't figure out how to do Laspeyres, Paasche and Fisher indexes
using Excel. Any Ideas?

Assuming this is a serious question, Wikipedia seems to provide correct
definitions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_i..._price_indices

So SUMPRODUCT is the only function needed.

Laspeyres:
=SUMPRODUCT(Prices_thisperiod,Quantities_baseperio d)
/SUMPRODUCT(Prices_baseperiod,Quantities_baseperiod )

Paasche:
=SUMPRODUCT(Prices_thisperiod,Quantities_thisperio d)
/SUMPRODUCT(Prices_baseperiod,Quantities_thisperiod )

Fischer:
=GEOMEAN(LaspeyresIndex,PaascheIndex)

and, FTHOI, Marshall-Edgeworth:
=SUMPRODUCT(Prices_thisperiod,(Quantities_baseperi od+Quantities_thisperiod))
/SUMPRODUCT(Prices_baseperiod,(Quantities_baseperio d+Quantities_thisperiod))