
Before trying to run Opus, please be sure to read
INSTALL.DOC, as it contains VITAL information!!!

OPUS.DOC, OUTCHART.DOC, and INSTALL.DOC are formatted for a
standard 3-ring binder, and they may be printed directly from
the Desktop.

The sample worksheets included are:

   - AMORTIZE.OPS, a loan amortization calculator
   - FINCALC.OPS, a 5 function financial calculator
   - KINETICS.OPS, enzyme kinetics worksheet
   - REGR_EX.OPS, regression examples
   - SALES.OPS, demonstrates 4 different chart types
   - SERR.OPS, standard error bar example

AMORTIZE.OPS was originally posted on Compuserve for Opus v. 1.02; I've
made some minor changes in porting it to v. 2.00. First of all, the
financial functions now return and expect negative numbers for cash
outflows and positive numbers for cash inflows, so the payments are all
negative numbers. Here's the original author's (name unknown- sorry)
instructions with the changes I made:

   First, go to cell E4 and enter a dollar amount. Then go to cell E5 and 
   type in an interest amount.  Use a decimal format like 0.09.  
   Next go to cell E6 and enter the number of years for the loan.
   After entering your data, press 'F1' one time and the loan will be 
   calculated and an amortization table will be built.  

   If you are calculating a loan that is longer than 4 years, just 
   hit 'F1' again and the next group of months will show beginning 
   with month 49.  If you are calculating a 30 year home mortgate, it 
   will take 8 hits on the 'F1' key to display all entries in the
   amortization table. When you hit it the 9th time, the table will 
   start over again.  You can clear the table by entering a 0 in cell E5 
   and hitting 'F1' twice.

   The natural order and automatic recalculation modes must remain OFF,
   so do not alter them.

   Note: this worksheet only handles loans with monthly payments and with
   monthly compounding of interest.

The author made clever use of circular cell references to perform a sort
of looping in calculating loans with greater than 48 payments. Otherwise,
one would have had to extend the table for as many cells as there might
be periods. This worksheet is also a good example of usage of named cell
references.

FINCALC.OPS is a simple five function financial calculator that computes
any of future value, present value, interest rate, payments, and number of
periods when given the other four. It's usage is described within the
worksheet. Remember, inflows are positive, while outflows are negative!

KINETICS.OPS illustrates a scientific use of a spreadsheet in analyzing
experimental data. It also contains three nice charts, two of which
demonstrate regression techniques.

REGR_EX.OPS is a regression example from the business world.

SALES.OPS illustrates 4 different chart types, generated from the same
set of simple data.

SERR.OPS demostrates plotting of standard error bars for grouped data.


